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OUE MARTYR PRESIDENT, 



i\ 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



VOICES FROM THE PULPIT 



OF 



NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN. 



ORATION" 

BY 

Hon. GEO. BANCROFT. 



ORATION 

AT THE 

BURIAL, 

BY 

BISHOP SIMPSON. 




TIBBALS & WFITING, NEW YORK, 



6>1U • 




2 f ■/<%' J 



.8 j 



Entered, according: to Act of Congress, in the year 1965, by 

T I B P> A L S & WHITING, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District 

of New York. 



?^3 



ALYOED, PRINTER, 



Stereotyped by Smith & McDouga,,, S2 & S4 Beekman Street. 



fO 



CONTENTS. 



SERMON I. 

PAGE 

Rev. William R. Williams, D.D., 9 



SERMON II. 
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, 33 

SERMON III. 
Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D., 49 

SERMON IV. 
Rev. Stephen H. Tyng, D.D., 65 

SERMON V. 
Rev. Charles S. Robinson, 85 

SERMON VI. 
Rev. William Ives Budington, D.D., Ill 

SERMON VII. 
Rev. John McClintock, D.D., LL.D., 129 



IV CONTENTS. 



SERMON VIII. 

PAGE 

Rev. A. N. Littlejohn, D.D., 145 



SERMON IX. 
Rev. Theodore L. Cuyler, 159 

SERMON X. 
Rev. Joseph P. Thompson, D.D., 173 

SERMON XI. 
Rev. James Eells, D.D., 219 

SERMON XII. 
Rev. Elbert S. Porter, D.D., 233 

SERMON XIII. 
Rev. A. P. Rogers, D.D., 241 

SERMON XIV. 
Rev. S. D. Burchard, D.D., 255 

SERMON XV. 
Rev. J. E. Rockwell, D.D., 273 

SERMON XVI. 

Rev. Samuel T. Spear, D.D., 289 






CONTENTS. V 

SERMON XVII. 

PAGE 

Rev. Robert Lowry, 303 



SERMON XVIII. 
Rev. Albert S. Hunt, 317 

SERMON XIX. 
Rev. William Adams, D.D., 329 

SERMON XX. 
Rev. Henry J. Fox, 341 

SERMON XXI. 
Rev. Henry B. Smith, D.D., 359 

ORATIONS. 

Hon. George Bancroft, 383 

Bishop Simpson, 393 

PRAYERS. 

Stephen H. Tyng, D.D., 411 

Rev. E. P. Rogers, D.D., 417 



PREFATORY. 



To our Headers : 

"We offer you a memento of times of greatest mo- 
ment, of events of wondrous and tragic interest, of stupen- 
dous and successful crime, of unparalleled national grief. 

April 14, 1865 ! Memorable day ! impressed on the nation's 
heart as none other. Throughout the north the loyal of the 
people had been exultant as never before ; the power of the 
Eebellion had departed ; the legions of the Union were press- 
ing, with victorious tread, hard after the defeated and flying 
foe ; the tidings of victory, borne on the wings of the light- 
ning, reached every town and village of the land ; the starry 
banners were given to the breeze ; the cannon of peace thun- 
dered echoes to the cannon of war ; that for which all had 
sighed seemed to approach, and the patriotic and grateful 
hailed each other with glad voices and glowing faces. Who 
can tell what a day may bring forth ! The sun set on happi- 
ness and rejoicing ; the mantle of night fell on the land, and 
ere it was lifted a deed was consummated the intelligence of 
which should shake the world. Again the lightning courier 
sped on his way. Again tidings were borne to every town 
and village, and from happy slumber the people woke to 
horror and mourning, to sadness never to be forgotten in 
time — never to be told. The heads borne so proudly yester- 
day droop on the breast to-day ; the springing footstep of yes^ 



Vlll PREFATORY. 

terday is the funeral pace of to-day. Friends met in silence 
and tears. When utterance was given, men talked of God — 
of His providence — of His wisdom. The head of the nation 
was stricken and slain, and the nation turned to Him who is 
from everlasting to everlasting. In the centres of commerce 
and finance there was heard the voice of supplication. The 
Sabbath came — never more opportune — never more welcome 
— and in temples dedicated to Jehovah the heart-stricken 
gathered and waited while the ministers of God interpreted 
their feelings. 

In time to come, this record of the religious sentiment of 
the people, as, stricken and sad, they gathered in their places 
of worship, will be influential in bringing the darkest hour 
of the nation's life, with its surpassing interest, within the 
reach of the sympathy of coming generations. When the 
flowers have many times bloomed and faded on the grave of 
our martyred President ; when the banner of Peace floats 
over every acre of the broad territory of our glorious Union; 
when the hearts that felt the pangs of awful bereavement are 
still, men will assent to the facts recorded by the historian, 
but they cannot feel with the generation whose bosom re- 
ceived the fiery darts, unless they come in contact with their 
feelings. 

This volume treasures up the utterances of those who 
were the mouth-pieces of the people, and thus conveys to 
the readers of the future a better idea of the wonderful 
effects produced on the national heart by the assassination 
cf Abraham Lincoln, than can be conveyed in any other way. 



SERMON I. 



KEY. WILLIAM E. WILLIAMS, D. D. 



"Terily, Thou art a God that hidest Thyself, God of Israel, the 
Saviour." — Isaiah xlr. 15. 

The nation staggers, as if, besmeared and blinded with, 
their own gore, and stunned with amazement and indig- 
nation, each of the people felt on his own front the blud- 
geon, and found delivered on his own brow or throat, 
the assassin's shot and the assassin's knife, which have 
been aimed at the chief magistrate of the land, and at the 
household and person of the statesman highest in position 
anions; the counselors who formed that President's cabi- 
net. To calm, to guide, and to brace us, let us recur to 
the lesson of our text. It is a portion of Lloly Writ, 
which was a favorite theme for meditation, and a frequent 
citation with Blaise Pascal, one of the brightest and pro- 
foundest intellects in the history of our race ; and one too, 
whom the grace of God had made as eminently devout 
and Christian as he was great ; leading him to consecrate 
the splendor of his genius and the fervor of his nature, in 
lowly and hearty service to Christ and His truth. Amid 
the lurid tempest of calamity that lowers and growls and 
howls around us, this great principle stands immovable 

and serene, that the God of Israel, the Saviour, rules vet ; 

1* 



10 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

and that, all-wise and almighty as He is, He shall yet yoke 
even the whirlwinds of carnage and civil war among the 
outriders of his own predestined triumph. He is hidden 
in a dim, untraceable majesty, but though thus invisible, 
is not aloof from the turmoil. In justice and in mercy, 
in faithfulness and in vigilance, He is hidden behind all 
this dun, crimson hurricane, which for the time casts its 
ominous shadow over all the homes, and activities, and 
charities of the land. The storm is but the dust of his 
feet. " Clouds and darkness are round about him ;" yet 
none the less is it true that " righteousness and judgment 
are the habitations of his throne." Jehovah vailed — and 
vailed as the Bringer of Salvation — behind the commo- 
tions and distresses that most perplex and overwhelm a 
people — is the truth of which we are here reminded. And 
it is a lesson that may well cheer and hearten us, under 
losses had they been even more sudden, more startling and 
irreparable than ours now are. 

God hides himself. We could not, with our present 
organization, bear the full, bright blaze of His glories ; 
and would be consumed, instead of being enlightened, 
by the blasting splendor of the vision. Even the favored 
Moses might not see Jehovah's full majesty and live. 
And yet he would not and does not leave himself without 
sufficient witness of his being and his constant power and 
supervision. The outer world of material Nature, and 
the inner witness of reason and conscience in man's own 
bosom, are more than intimations of the Maker's charac- 
ter and will. Hence there is no inconsistency between 
the sentiment of our text, on the one hand, of a withdrawn 
and shadowed Majesty, and the language of the context, 



WILLIAMS. 11 

on the other hand, where in the same chapter,* our Maker 
and Ruler asserts : " I have not spoken in secret, in a 
dark place of the earth : I said not unto the seed of Jacob, 
seek ye me in vain : I, the Lord, speak righteousness. I 
declare things that are right." The hiding was not entire 
and absolute. Nature and history throb and palpitate 
evermore as in the conscious presence of their God. It 
was in no muttered, grovelling, and darkling oracle that 
the Most High addressed his Israel. In the centre of the 
world's ancient civilization, and not in any dark nook and 
remote corner of barbarism, was his revelation spoken. 
To prayer he turned no deaf ear, and gave no dilatory 
response. The Hearer of prayer who answered Jacob at 
Bethel, answered also Jacob's children as well, not at 
Shiloh and Mount Zion only, but wherever they kneeled. 
!Nor were his edicts flagrant wrongs and palpable contra- 
dictions, that violated all natural equity, and which 
shocked all right reason, as was the character of the 
teachings of the forged and rival deities of the heathen. 
But yet, though an outspoken revelation, and a prompt 
response to supplication, and a righteous and wise gov- 
ernment were evermore allowed to his people, on his part, 
no visible, outlined form shone out upon the Shekinah.' 
And hence, the classical Pagans who worshiped carved 
wood, and chiseled marble, and molten brass, contemned 
in their supercilious ignorance the Hebrew as worshiping 
empty air, because his God was a Spirit; because the 
sanctuary at Jerusalem displayed no picture or statue 
like the shrines of the Gentiles. 

And even in the word of Revelation, that he gave, there 

* Yer?c 19. 



12 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

was, beside the much that was plainly told, much that was 
withheld, or that was but remotely indicated. An at- 
titude of docile faith and habitual dependence was 
exacted from the worshipers, and even when he spake to 
an Abraham or a Moses as a man talked with his friend, 
it was not to make the favored patriarch the depositary of 
all God's councils, or to let either of them into the re- 
served store of his kingly and divine mysteries. They 
surveyed the day of the Messiah as at a distance ; and 
saw Canaan's King, as the one of them saw Canaan itself, 
in the broader, fuller manifestations of his dominion, only 
as from the remote peaks of Pisgah, seeing but " parts of 
his ways," and but " a little portion of Him,"* and were 
reminded that they could not " understand the thunder of 
his power." Even the most honored thus touched but the 
hem and outer fringe of Jehovah's vestments. And in 
this way, there were clues given which left none at a loss 
who honestly desired guidance and defense : there were 
obscurities and difficulties left which taught the most 
favored and the most highly advanced their need of meek- 
ness, lowliness, and reverence in approaching the Holy, 
the Only Wise, and the Infallible, as well as the Un- 
fathomable. And these same difficulties, in God's wise 
arrangement of discipline and retribution, afforded grounds 
of caviling to those who sought pretexts for their diso- 
bedience ; and became occasions of fatal stumbling to 
those who, in levity and insincerity, sought such occasion. 
The very book of divine teachings thus became not 
merely an intellectual discipline to its students, but a 
moral test. There was light to beam with growing 

* Job xxvi. 14. 



WILLIAMS. 13 

brightness on the children of light, who earnestly sought 
and honestly followed it. There was interspersed gloom, 
that, to those who loved darkness rather than light, fur- 
nished plausible coverts under which they might burrow 
their way back to unbelief, atheism, and perdition. 

Ancl when God came in human flesh, and the Incarnate 
walked the hill-sides of Palestine, and the streets of Jeru- 
salem, how wondrously did this — the Unfolding of the 
divine character and nature — yet retain, in itself, traits of 
the Enfolding and covering up of the Divine Majesty. 
The Manifestation enshrouded, on some sides and at cer- 
tain times, very much of the glory as of the Only Begotten 
of the Father, which, on other sides and at other times, it 
allowed brightly to stream forth. It shone on Tabor, but 
how did it seem eclipsed on Calvary. As the Son of God, 
how startling and towering were his claims, and how full 
his divine credentials. Yet, as the Son of Man, how did 
he wear our sinless infirmities as the exterior wrappers of 
the Indwelling Divinity, and the mortal Tabernacle and 
Vail of the Incarnate Jehovah. On the side of his abase- 
ment, who stooped lower? On the side of his proper and 
hereditary honor, who towered higher ? What Rabbi, or 
Sanhedrim, or Prophet, or Sovereign, uttered a loftier 
claim than that which called men to honor him, the Son, 
even as they honored the Father? Verily, from the man- 
ger to the Cross, the Saviour was a God " hiding himself /" 
and yet, along his whole career, in his discourses and in 
his miracles, how did he allow the streams of his majestic 
brightness to break out, as at every window, and loophole, 
and crevice, of the pavilion under which he moved. His 
entrance upon the mortal stage, and his withdrawal from 



14 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

it, in the interlacing gloom and glory, required, from the 
eastern sages who saw his star, and the Bethlehem shep- 
herds who heard his angelic escort, and from the Roman 
sentinel at his cross, watching all the portents of his death, 
the acknowledgment that this was indeed the Kino; of 
Israel and the Son of God. But the Day-dawn from on 
high, thus visiting us, was, both in its mortal sun-rising 
and in its mortal sun-setting, begirt with clouds. The 
first comers saw an infant laid in the manger of the inn, 
the feeding trough of the cattle. The earliest gossip of 
Hebrew newsmongers, about the visit of the wise men and 
the star guiding them, w T as soon intermingled with the 
tale of the butcheries that left the mothers of Bethlehem 
frenzied mourners. The attendants around the last scenes 
of our Lord's earthly career beheld and heard a bruised 
and plaintive sufferer, and in the cross where he hung saw 
probably but a trunk, in aspect quite like to the two con- 
tiguous stakes where writhed, on his right hand and his 
left, two ordinary, vulgar, and ill-favored malefactors. 

And, as in the Scripture, and in the very Incarnation, 
the gloom lay, in broad, mantling folds, around and beside 
the glory, so, too, in his daily Providence, does he allow 
himself to seem, at times, withdrawn and concealed, in 
disappointment of our confiding expectations — in disar- 
rangement often of the wisest human plans, and in what, 
at least, looks like indifference to our highest interests. 
Like the disciples in their gloomy conference on the way 
to Etnmaus, we are perplexed at the frustration, so rude, 
of what seemed hopes so blessed and so just. Why does 
Falsehood have for an hour currency, and even, not for 
weeks only, but for entire centuries, in the realms ruled 



WILLIAMS. 15 

over by a God of truth ? Why is Wrong ever allowed a 
span of impunity — however narrow be that span — under 
the very eye-lids of a God alike almighty and all-righteous? 
We may answer, without danger of presumption : Because 
a state of moral probation for our race requires the doubt 
and the trial, in order to test the fullness of our loyal trust 
in the Sovereign and Father ; and in order to awaken and 
to reward the earnestness and importunity of our filial 
prayers. We walk by faith, and not by sight. Our hope 
must be fetched from the unseen ; for, as the apostle 
argues, " What a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?" 
So, too, by sharp and sudden reverses, he weans us from 
self-reliance, and from undue confidence in our fellow 
mortal, and braces our trust, more directly and more 
firmly, upon his own all-sufficiency and unchangeableness. 
He stains, by disaster, the pride of all human glorying, 
and checks, by flickering shades of uncertainty and be- 
reavement, the brightest of our earthly blessings, that 
man may find nothing beyond Himself — the All-in-All. 
Here the parent weeps over the child's empty cradle. 
There the orphan, through blinding tears, gazes on a 
parent's vacant place. He reminds us of sin, in the per- 
petual visits of death, and in the suddenness of its inroads ; 
and he warns us against heedless provocations, and ha- 
bitual sluggishness, by startling rebuffs, and unlooked-for 
humiliations and desolations. So, too, it comes to pass, 
that his richest mercies visit us often in the ffuise, or in 
the train, of heavy judgments ; and so, on many a shore, 
his judgments upon a nation are made the forerunners of 
richest consolation and widest revival to his churches. 
His keen chastisements but plough and harrow the soil 



16 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

for harvests of unexampled blessing, enrichment, and dis- 
enthralment. The darkness makes the light more vivid 
while it shines, but the returning shadows teach us that 
the light is heaven's boon, not man's perquisite. So, to 
his ancient Israel, amid the wonders of the Exodus, while 
the angel of the Lord, in the cloudy, fiery pillar, led them, 
there w T as a continuous admonition of the Divine inspec- 
tion and control. And yet that captain of the Lord's host 
walked in darkness, nor let the sound of his footsteps be 
heard by the quickest ear in all the camps that he now 
broke up, and that he now again pitched. Yet occasion- 
ally and gloriously was the shout of a king heard, re- 
sounding in those same encampments. He was their 
Saviour, but, ordinarily, an unseen one. He was their 
Conductor, but, most commonly, an inaudible one. He 
was their Omnipresent Keeper, neither slumbering nor 
sleeping ; but no eye was wont to catch sight of their 
guardian's feet, and no groping quest felt distinctly the 
pulses of the guardian's outstretched and guiding hand. 
Among them and before them — their van-guard and their 
rear-ward — he yet hid himself from them ; constant, and 
watchful, and bounteous Saviour, though he evermore con- 
tinued to be. 

Now, in days of calamity and trial, we are prone to ex- 
aggerate this trait of the divine conduct towards us, as if 
it were on his part abandonment and desertion — as if, in 
the sudden lurch given by the ship of the state under the 
stress of the storm, the helm of the universe had swept out 
of the Divine Pilot's hand. We complain, with Job, of 
looking for the Most High on the right hand and the left, 
alike in vain; of failing, as w T e go forward, or as we re- 



WILLIAMS. 17 

trace backward our past steps, to discover any further 
proofs of his closeness to us, and of his interest in our con- 
cerns. Is the Mighty and the Just One, any longer, near 
to us, midst bereavement and disaster, and crimes that 
unite such cruelty and treachery to such seeming im- 
punity ? 

'A chief magistrate, chosen to his high post in most diffi- 
cult times — a man of the people, in his training, and tastes, 
and habits, and utterances, but simple, massive, sincere, 
kindly and patient, had filled his first term of four years. 
And now, but in the second month of his second term of 
four years, he is congratulating us on the apparent success 
of the gigantic conflict, in which he and we had embarked 
for the vindication of the national unity and life. Four 
years since had the flag of the Union been lowered at Fort 
Sumter in South Carolina, as the attempted revolution 
began its treacherous outbreak. On the very anniversary 
which completed four years of time from the descent of 
that flag adown the staff whence it had long floated, the 
noble officer who had been compelled to surrender the post 
is instructed to raise it again on the ruinous mound. He 
has probably done it on that fortress of our southern coast. 
But, unknown to him and to his associates who have been 
thus heralding the failure of Treason, bearded in its own den, 
and the return of Authority and Nationality to these their 
rightful outposts — that president, under whose orders they 
act, is, at the very centre and seat of the national govern- 
ment, himself smitten down. It is not in Richmond, the sur- 
rendered capital of the baffled revolt, that this occurs ; but in 
Washington, where, for four years of what had almost seem- 
ed a garrison life, he had been each month of the preceding 



18 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

term in greater apparent danger of such assault than now. 
And this, too, when in a recent visit to that recovered city of 
Richmond, this eminent victim had shown such disposition 
to welcome the return of the worsted and baffled insur- 
gents, by a gentleness and magnanimity which four years of 
contumelious obloquy had not soured, and with a parental 
indulgence that many of his staunchest supporters blamed 
as extreme. Shrewd, apt, penetrating, and yet familiar, 
honest and firm, he had established himself — against 
strongest disadvantages — in the popular heart, and in the 
esteem of the friends of freedom in the Old World. He 
was widely hailed as akin to our first President Washing- 
ton in the simplicity, breadth, disinterestedness and in- 
tegrity of his character ; called of Providence, as he seemed 
to be, to become the Restorer over a wider territory and 
against a fiercer foe, where Washington had been the 
Founder. He fell, not by an open, manful attack, but 
under a shot fired without warning, from behind : not, in 
a collision waged upon equal terms, but by an assault 
marked with a ferocious disregard of all equality of risks, 
he is dispatched unawares. And the murderer mouths, with 
a flourish of his dagger, " Such be evermore the tyrant's 
fate," a motto borrowed from the escutcheon of Virginia, 
and, upon that State's shield, surrounding a presentiment 
of David with the head of Goliath. It w r as as if the 
cowardly stabber would plant himself, in his frenzied 
avenging of the cause of oppression, on the glorious plane 
of David, the fearless champion of Israel's freedom, and ot 
Israel's God; and would fain make his victim a huge, 
lawless, godless Gittite, who had invaded a country not his 
own : while actually that murdered magistrate was but 



WILLIAMS. 19 

asserting, as his official oath bound him to assert it, the 
whole nation's right, as banded freemen, to the whole of 
that nation's territory. 

On that same night and at the same hour a Confederate 
assassin attacks the Secretary of State, when confined to 
his couch by a fracture of both the arm and the jaw, and 
under the vile falsehood of a friendly, not only, but of a 
medical errand, with a brazen fraud that recalls the Joab 
or the Judas, simulating friendship, when contriving mur- 
der, he attempts, himself, the young, vigorous, and sinewy, 
to sever the throat of this aged, disabled, and bed-ridden, 
and helpless object of his malignity. Frantically he 
stabbed and bludgeoned, not the parent only, but the sons 
and attendants of his intended quarry, and all on the same 
chivalrous pretext of exterminating tyranny; as if there 
could be a tyranny viler than that which, in the cause of 
oppression, resorted to methods so mendacious and remorse- 
less. 

Was the God of justice indifferent, that he permitted 
the butchery of a kindly, generous, patriotic, and upright 
ruler ; and that he allowed what may possibly, if not pro- 
bably* — be the attendant slaughter of others, whose only 
fault was that they were that ruler's faithful and chosen 
counselors, or were but the inmates of the household of 
that foremost statesman in the cabinet of that massacred 
chief? While stealthy and craven murder, with bludgeon 
and knife and pistol, thus raged, and thus — for the time 
at least — escaped, did the Justice on high slumber, or con- 
nive, or sanction ? It neither sanctioned deed so foul, nor 
connived at ferocity so base, nor slumbered for one moment, 

*Apprehensions since, in God's mercy, disappointed. 



20 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

through all the slow concoction, and all the swift achieve- 
ment of the plot. 

But if God — as it may well be — saw that — much as the 
nation had already learned,* in the few later months of the 
struggle, to know of the inherent evils, and of the ineradi- 
cable barbarism of Slavery — it yet needed, by a more 
malign outbreak, and a more distinguished sacrifice, to 
have its holy wrath aroused and intensified into a deadly 
and uncompromising decision against all further tolerance 
of the system — then might not this very hiding of himself, 
as the Immediate Avenger — this abstinence from inter- 
vening to ward off the attack — this delay to entangle the 
assailants by an immediate pursuit, and a prompt punish- 
ment on the part of the by-standers — prove him in the end 
and at the more fitting season, the fuller and the more ef- 
fectual Yindicator of the rights and lives thus hacked at % 
Might not the Judge of all the earth — thus for the time 
withdrawn, and vailing his cognizance of the huge crime — 
become, by such apparent withdrawal and delay to inter- 
pose, only the more signally, and the more surely, the Just 
Extirpator of the usages of a social system, which made 
for centuries the slave so mute a victim, and the slave-mas- 
ter so relentless and brutal a foeman ? In a document, 
which was his own last message, Abraham Lincoln had 
spoken of God's possible purpose to compensate each drop 
of blood drawn by the driver's lash, by another drop 
of blood streaming from the soldier's sword. Might not 
the All- Wise God emphasize and rubricate that message, . 
so to speak, by allowing the dying spasms of the tyranny 
which wielded that driver's lash, to dash, as it were, upon 
the face of this prophetic admonition, the blood of its 



WILLIAMS. 21 

utterer ; and thus leave it, for all after-time of our national 
history, slavery's bloody hand set at its own clumsy seal, 
slavery's crimson endorsement of its own indictment? 
Might not the very champions of the institution become 
thus God's select and appointed expositors of its true 
. hideousness, and his unconscious executioners of their own 
idol, whilst they deemed themselves its heroic avengers ? 
They had been wont to speak with profuse, unstinted 
eulogy, of the slaveholder's relations to his bondmen as 
rearing a nobler civilization, and nursing a rare and true 
chivalry, like that of the old Paladins and Bayards. In a 
school book prepared in Britain for the use of their own 
Southern youth, they had spoken of Southern society as 
lacking but titles to make it the peer and welcome mate of 
the nobler classes of Europe. When this chivalry, thus 
disdainful of Northern industry, had 'been left, as at 
Andersonville and Belle Isle to famish and dismember 
and craze its prisoners ; to butcher, as at Fort Pillow, its 
surrendered, disarmed, and unresisting prisoners because 
of their dusky skin ; to plan the burning of Northern 
hotels, with their unarmed inmates, non-combatants, and 
many of them helpless women and children ; to offer in 
their own public journals large moneyed rewards for the 
heads of their Northern opposers, as if the Dayak and 
the New Zealander were the crowning types of their 
vaunted chivalry ; and to carve into finger-rings the bones 
of their Northern foemen fallen in battle ; and then, to 
inaugurate private assassination as the -supplement of fail- 
ure in open war, was not the system, so employing its 
lease of domination, and so carrying out its demonstrations 
of vaunted superiority in knightly valor, and honor, and 



22 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

refinement, and courtesy, left virtually in the avenging 
wisdom of God, to fill up before the nations of the earth, 
the measure of its own dishonor and their loathing % The 
cry of the assailant, as he brandished the knife, ■ ■ Such be 
evermore the tyrant's fate," was not, as he intended it, the 
verdict of conscience and history against the murdered, 
but the assassin's self-recited verdict of that conscience and 
that history, and of the God who implanted the one and 
who shapes the other, against the murderers, and against 
the yet more tyrannous system that bred them. " To 
perish in their own corruption," is the fearful doom of 
Scripture against sinners — a rotting away in the leprous 
sloughing of their own vices. And the embodied Tyranny 
that, defiant, elate, and vaunting, wrote itself thus bloody, 
thus ruthless, and thus false, and then seemed to look round, 
assured of sympathy and applause, was in fact, but building 
its own gibbet by the feat, and writing in red letters its own 
death-sentence for the amazement of a gazing and loath- 
ing Universe ; at the very same time, and in the very act, 
by which it supposed itself the rival of old Roman hero- 
ism and of old Hebrew devotedness, treading in the steps, 
as it thought, of Brutus and of David. In the mysteries 
of the Divine government, it is needed that a certain range 
and swoop be given for " sw" to show, in the affecting and 
inimitable language of Scripture, its own " exceeding sin- 
fulness" And God may have given to rebellion and slave- 
breeding their long tether of domination and their high, 
broad stage of glorying, and this new glut of eminent 
victims, only in the just intent that thus they might earn 
a wider execration, and go down amid a more unanimous 
tempest of denunciation and abhorrence ; the shriek of 



WILLIAMS. 23 

ilieir own frenzied triumph, but, in another and juster 
sense of it, the world's indignant acclaim over the tyranny 
that dealt so craven a blow, and contrived so dastardly aud 
ferocious a treachery. 

God, again, removes his own useful and honored instru- 
ments, at dates that to us seem untimely, and in modes, 
that, although painful and even shocking to themselves and 
to the survivors and friends who mourn them, yet do, in 
reality, round the course of the departed as into a more 
epic symmetry, and crown the hero's or statesman's career 
of enfranchisement and victory, as with something that 
resembles the palm of religious martyrdom. The success- 
ful policy, and the triumphant campaign might secure 
to him who had ordered the one or the other, a niche of 
honor in the nation's gallery of her chief worthies, who 
had deserved well of the Republic. An earlier assassina- 
tion of this chosen ruler had been menaced and probably 
intended at Baltimore, when he was first going to be 
inducted into office. It was, in God's good providence, an 
utter failure. How much, in the interval between the two 
terms of the first, frustrated attempt, and the final con- 
summation of the second attempt, had God permitted this 
chief of our people to witness and to accomplish ? And 
all the intervening denunciation by frenzied opposers and 
now at last the bullet of fanatical hate, have served finally 
to give to the character thus developed, and the career, 
thus suddenly shut, a yet loftier niche in the nation's 
grateful memory. It has now become shelved, apart from 
predecessors — and it may be trusted, from successors also — 
the name and fame of a vast revolt successfully quelled — 
of a great social reform, that seemed to require centuries, 



24 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

completed in a half decade — a name and fame safely 
sealed by so tragic and fonl a death. 

In the fierce hate of Catholic Spain against Protestant 
Holland the pistol of Balthazar Gerardt let out the life 
of Holland's noblest and ablest champion. But when the 
honored Prince of Orange, William the Taciturn, died, 
thus foully and suddenly, although Spain conferred patents 
of nobility as her guerdon for the act on the murderer's 
kin, did the death daunt and overwhelm the nascent free- 
dom and the suffering Protestantism of the Netherlands ? 
Has the world a literature or an ethical system that can 
long glorify our Balthazar Gerardt ? In an early day of 
the European Eeformation, one brother, in his frenzied 
detestation of the new doctrine killed another — under the 
guise of friendship — his own brother because a protestant 
heretic. The persecuting church applauded the new Cain 
who had thus struck down, by perfidy and fratricide, a 
new Abel. But did the honors of the church arrest the 
world's general judgment of the slaughter; or stay the 
contagious power of the faith professed by the martyr? 
The St. Bartholomew Massacre was, for the time, a sad 
discouragement of the Calvinists of France and Europe. 
But the field of Ivry, and the Edict of Nantes came in its 
ultimate train. And, meanwhile, did it most damage and 
blacken the victims, or the atrocious authors of the plot ? 
And who of us would not rather choose to go down to 
posterity with the aged Coligny, with his white hairs 
bedabbled in blood, whom it sacrificed, than with the wily 
and ruthless Catharine de Medici, and her son Charles IX., 
who survived the butchery, and for the time chuckled and 
gloated over the success of their crime ? It is the victim, 



WILLIAMS. 25 

meekly faithful, in such a fierce collision, and such a 
solemn crisis, who, by the judgment of man's conscience, 
and the decree of the Divine Lord of conscience, remains 
the real conqueror, and not his unpunished slayer. As 
said cheerily the aged Latimer, when they had bound him 
to the stake and lie turned to a fellow confessor with no 
wail in his tone, and no gloom in his eye : " We light this 
day, brother Ridley, a candle in England, which they will 
never put out." Many were the murders of that Marian 
era; but Foxe's Book of Martyrs which records them, 
remains to this day one of the bulwarks and safeguards of 
the National Protestantism. And so in later days of 
English history, the sufferings of Puritan and Noncon- 
formist, at the hands of the Stuart line of kings, only 
served to bar, finally and effectually, the return of that 
royal house to the English throne. Talleyrand, a perspi- 
cacious observer of man's nature and of the currents of 
social change, spoke of guilty acts that were worse than 
crimes — they were blunders. Now, really, and under the 
divine legislation, all crime is blundering. It blunders, as 
to its aims ; it blunders, as to its methods ; and it blunders, 
as to its results. But there are crimes of singular atrocity 
which have as much of absurdity as atrocity. The slaughter 
by Herod of the babes of Bethlehem was such a sin. 
Aimed at the absent and invincible Messiah, it immor- 
talized the plotter, as one, who shrunk not from the 
massacre of innocent nurslings, in his most impotent hope 
of foiling the Infallible, and achieving a successful Deicide. 
Crimes that are of an especial zest to their authors and their 
patrons, may yet, before the bar^of posterity, be adjudged 

incrediblv foolish for the blindness that filled the contrivers 

2 



2f) DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

as to the inevitable recoil of their own effort. And so the 
men, who plotted this slaughter in our high places, when 
talking of tyranny as if that tyranny inhered mainly or 
only in the soul which they unhoused, were actually stab- 
bing to the heart that form of society, that slavebred 
chivalry, which they affected to advocate, and expected, 
in this savage fashion, to illustrate and to vindicate. The 
curse invoked by the Jews on the head of the Crucified 
came, hurtling back, in bloody rain, on them and their 
children's children, through long centuries and across wide 
continents. Those old Hebrews denounced their victim 
as a deceiver of the people ; but were in fact, themselves, 
the most deceived of all people, in thus rejecting their 
true Deliverer, and choosing to be thralled by the veriest 
delusions of the destroyer. So, in less degree, is it with 
lesser and later crimes. " The curse causeless " travels 
back, dire and swift, on the heads of its guilty shouters. 
The banner may — or may not, have been that day, restored 
by its old defenders to the walls of Fort Sumter. But the 
pistol-shot, discharged that same day, in Washington, if 
we do not read all wrongly the omens of Providence, 
saluted another and more momentous flag-raising. The 
bullet-shot and the knife-stab, that evening delivered, have 
effectually nailed to the mast of the ship of state the 
banner of Emancipation — of universal — unconditional — 
uncompensated and unrepealable enfranchisement. This 
evil, Slavery, has been through our whole national lifetime 
the Achan, troubling our peace. We must bury it now, 
in this valley of Achor, the scene of our national mourn- 
ing. Let them massacre without stint, the witnesses of 
Right at the North, wherever they may choose them, in 



WILLIAMS. 27 

legislative halls, pulpits, at presses or in professors' chairs. 
But the slaughterers have even thus but fixed that banner 
of enfranchisement. These men of the South have them- 
selves driven, with their own violent hands, the nails that 
fasten it in place. Who, Korth or South, has power to 
draw the nails so driven ? So perishes tyranny, drunk in 
the frenzy of its hate, and shouting its own doom, like 
Caiaphas, a truer prophet than it had imagined itself, 
when supposing itself triumphant over its gasping victims. 
The men of our own State may well, at such times, find 
happy and blessed lessons, as they remember the yet 
loftier motto, borne on the escutcheon of our own free 
State, " Higher." Let us, in the fear of our God, rise 
higher and higher, through the storms and glooms of the 
time, to the purer and serener regions above, where the 
Lord God of our fathers sits in untroubled Sovereignty. 
Let us calm and brace ourselves in the assurance, that no 
event, however unwelcome, or guilty, or disastrous — no 
influence for evil however defiant — no effort towards good 
however feeble, obscure, or powerless it may to us seem, — 
is there on our lower plane of action and observation, 
but it is distinctly and exactly ordered, permitted, or over- 
ruled, as a part of the great scheme of Providence, which 
on that loftier plane above is moving steadily on to its 
blessed consummation. Let us rejoice that our misguided 
foes must strike " higher " than they have yet aimed, if 
they would hope to uproot our confidence and to kill our 
principles. They must stab out the sun on high — the 
mounting, morning sun, as portrayed on the State shield, 
and in its place there a fit emblem, as we may read it, of 
the rising Sun of Righteousness — if. they would proscribe 



28 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

Liberty, and banish Kighteousness, and exile effectually 
Conscience, and Hope, and Truth, from the earth. Can 
those who would " frame mischief by a law " expect to 
succeed, unless they can persuade the Common Father to 
interpolate it into his own legislation ? Till they do, can 
they hope ; or need we despair ? And the Jehovah dwell- 
ing in the high and holy place can bring, and is of old 
wont to bring, great deliverance in the train of vast 
sorrows, and even of hideous crimes. This the Judge of 
all the earth has, like earthly magistrates, his certain set 
times of visitation. In these eras of crisis, and of inquisi- 
tion, and of retribution, he often precipitates, into a 
brief space, the decision of questions that, have been slowly 
ripening for long generations before. He " cuts short his 
work in righteousness." May not the changes and wastings 
that are upon us be regarded but as a summons from his 
secret pavilion, bidding us to look up, with loftier aims, 
and calmer trust, and more untiring prayer ? Methinks it 
is but the trumpet peal that heralds the intervention and 
fuller manifestation of the God, who, as the hearer 
of prayer, is thus demanding from his people a more 
earnest and importunate use of prayer. He waits to be 
inquired of; and he is pledged that this inquiry shall not 
be left, as to his people's interests, a fruitless one. May 
we not well believe that the dreadful mutations of our 
times and of this present war, are in his survey of them, 
but newer and deeper and broader channels which he has 
opened to evangelization, and along which shall rush a 
more rapid and wide stream of truth ? Will not the God 
of Israel — the Saviour thereof — not from trouble — but 
the Saviour thereof by means of trouble — if earnestly and 



WILLIAMS. 29 

passionately invoked, come forth out of the very scenes of 
bereavement, desolation, and carnage that have littered 
the land with ruins ; and show himself the Zerubbabel of 
a larger captivity than that which followed Nehemi ah and 
Ezra from the Euphrates to the Jordan ? Is not the residue 
of the Spirit with him, but awaiting the ascent of prayer, 
then to descend in showers of benediction over a regene- 
rate, accordant, and prosperous nation \ Those celestial 
and God-given influences wait not for man's permission 
to take their free and mighty course. He cannot curb 
them or exclude them more than he can shut out heaven's 
dropping rains, or returning daylight. A "higher" 
power overrides earthly schemings, and barriers, flooding 
and dominating them, like " morning spread on the moun- 
tains." Reminded how terribly may be exacted the vast 
arrears of long unpunished sin, let us put promptly and 
thoroughly away the relics, habits, and spirit of oppression. 
Admonished how suddenly the paths of worldly ambition 
and activity may terminate in the tomb, should not the 
young, the busy, and the eager, and the giddy be startled, 
amid these funeral solemnities, to bethink themselves of 
that eternity, of which we are but too easily and generally 
forgetful ? Was there not wisdom in his time, and is 
there not equal wisdom for our time, in the prophet's 
decision : " And I will wait upon the Lord that hideth his 
face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him.* 
Has he not, and by the same Isaiah, replied to such a quest 
at such a time : " In a little wrath I hid my face from thee 
for a moment ; but with everlasting kindness will I have 
mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer."f " And 

* Isaiah viii. 11. f Isaiah liv. 8. 



30 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God ; we have 
limited for him, and he will save us; this is the Lord; we 
have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his 
salvation"* In the days of his incarnation he seemed 
sheltering himself from the prayers of the Syrophcenieian 
mother, importunate in her pleadings for her child ; but 
the withdrawal was but in kindness, to make more signal 
the faith that persisted in praying, and more exuberant 
the benediction which descended on that persistent, 
undaunted trust. High, therefore, and yet " higher " let' 
the intercessions of the home, the closet, and the sanctuary 
arise, that, out of this crisis and agony of the national life, 
may yet revolve untold deliverances, and enduring and 
pervasive reformation. 

Is it not a refreshment and a delight to remember that 
the Jesus whom we preach, and in whose name your 
prayers and hymns mount heavenward, and who is now 
exalted to the throne of supremest dominion, was himself 
once the maligned, the sacrificed, and the blasphemed? 
But in his rejection and entombment he was but preparing 
the overthrow of unbelief, and the triumph of his own 
gospel and kingdom. "Light is sown for the righteous." 
Christ reigns in this very day of our nation's mourning ; 
and this Christian nation lives, whoever of its trusted 
captains falls; and this Christian freedom rises vindicated, 
consecrated, and necessitated by every gash and bullet- 
wound made in her confessors. When from under the 
altar the souls of those slain for the truth of God were 
heard asking, "How long, Lord?" the infinite faith- 
fulness of that most high and Holy One was heard, 

* Isaiah xxv. 8. 



WILLIAMS. 31 

admeasuring the time, and assuring the ultimate victory, 
however long delayed. 

We cannot but believe, that the nobler minds of the 
South will themselves recoil from a cause that has such 
patrons as the conspirators and assassins, now betraying 
their hand — that the new crime will, by God's gracious 
alchemy, furnish a test which shall clear from clinging 
delusions many of the better intellects and nobler hearts 
of the southern States. If, in others of that population, it 
but precipitate a new and darker ferocity, it pillories their 
own cause; and sentences the fanatical tyranny to a more 
general reprobation, and a speedier and more irrevocable 
overthrow. And as of old Pentecost came in the wake of 
the last Passion, may we not well hope, and should we not 
earnestly pray, that the Holy Spirit, the Enlightener, and 
the Ken ewer, and the Consoler — will go forth over the 
very track of devastation, unspent in his infinite energy, 
on his errand of enkindling, and renovating, reconciling, 
sanctifying and restoring? May not his own churches, 
rejoicing in the life, inaccessible and indestructible, of this 
Blessed Friend, entrust cheerfully to his guardianship 
their own earthly lives, so soon and perchance so suddenly 
to close ? It is his right not only, but it is his wont, to 
confer a peace which no earthly wars or commotions can 
shatter, and a life for the human soul, which death itself 
can not spill, but only enhance and defecate. He waits 
for the prayer of Zion ; and he responds victoriously to 
her trust. 

Be the Lord's, that you may be all the more truly and 
more effectively classed among your country's guardians 
and bulwarks. Free by his grace, the man who is the 
Lord's freeman — be his worldly infelicities what they 



32 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

may — is at the last free as a denizen of the New Jerusa- 
lem, beyond and above these lower scenes of carnage, 
strife, woe and sin. This Captain of salvation may be 
hidden from the worldly, careless and impenitent ; and 
seem effectually concealed beneath the thick vails of 
Nature and Providence, which neither wholly reveal, nor 
yet wholly disguise his worldly pathway. But, if hidden to 
them who believe him not and seek him not, he tenderly 
and habitually reveals himself to the eager inquirer, the 
praying disciple, and the obedient follower. Sweet are 
the glimpses which faith and hope and love win of him, in 
the earthly pilgrimage; but what shall be the full-orbed 
manifestation of that Saviour seen in his heavenly man- 
sions, not for a time but forevermore. " We shall be like 
unto him, for we shall see him as he is." Some, even in 
the judgment, shall, like Balaam, see him " but not near," 
and, repelled from his throne, shall be sentenced to a yet 
greater removal, and to the long, sad exile of an endless 
night and a hopeless sorrow. What a hiding shall that 
be, on the part of a long refused Saviour, now clothed in 
all the tremendous majesty of an incensed Judge, with- 
drawn entirely and eternally from the sufferers who 
steadily spurned his consolations, and the sinners who 
slighted, defied and forfeited the grace which would fain 
have blessed and rescued them. In outraging him, they 
missed pardon and flung away the glory and repose and 
felicity of Paradise. " They are hidden from thine eyes," 
was his own lament over obdurate Jerusalem. Let not 
ours be the stubborn ingratitude and unbelief that eclipses 
the Lio\ht of Life, and leaves us the heirs of such a wrath 
and such a ban, as the rejected Saviour must pronounce 
against the rejecting sinner. 



SERMON II. 



KEY. TTEKRY WAED BEECHEE. 



" And Moses went up from the plains of Moab, unto the mountain Oi 
Nebo, to the top of Pisgali, that is over against Jericho ; and the Lord 
showed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan, and all Naphtali, and the land 
of Ephraim, and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, unto the utmost sea, 
and the south, and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, 
unto Zoor. And the Lord said unto him, this is the land which I swear unto 
Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed : 
I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over 
thither. So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, 
according to the word of the Lord."' — Deut. xxxiv. 1-5. 

There is no historic figure more noble than that of the 
Jewish lawgiver. After so many thousand years, the 
figure of Moses is not diminished, but stands up against 
the background of early days, distinct and individual as 
if he had lived but yesterday. There is scarcely another 
event in history more touching than his death. He had 
borne the great burdens of states for forty years, shaped 
the Jews to a nation, filled out their civil and religious 
polity, administered their laws, guided their steps, or 
dwelt with them in all their journeyings in the wilder- 
ness ; had mourned in their punishment, kept step with 
their march, and led them in wars, until the end of their 
labors drew nigh. The last stage was reached. Jordan 
only lay between them and the promised land. The pro- 

9* 



34 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

mised land ! — oh, what yearnings had heaved his breast 
for that divinely promised place ! He had dreamed of it 
by night, and mused by day. It was holy and endeared 
as God's favored spot. It was to be the cradle of an 
illustrious history. All his long, laborious, and now 
weary life, he had aimed at this as the consummation of 
every desire, the reward of every toil and pain. Then 
came the word of the Lord to him, " Thou mayest not 
go over. Get thee up into the mountain, look upon it, 
and die." 

From that silent summit, the hoary leader gazed to the 
north, to the south, to the west, with hungry eyes. The 
dim outlines rose up. The hazy recesses spoke of quiet 
valleys between the hills. With eager longing, with sad 
resignation, he looked upon the promised land. It was 
now to him a forbidden land. It was a moment's anguish. 
He forgot all his personal wants, and drank in the vision 
of his people's home. His work was done. There lay 
God's promise fulfilled. There was the seat of coming 
Jerusalem ; there the city of Judah's King ; the sphere of 
judges and prophets ; the mount of sorrow and salvation ; 
the nest whence were to fly blessings innumerable to all 
mankind. Joy chased sadness from every feature, and 
the prophet laid him down and died. 

Again a great leader of the people has passed through 
toil, sorrow, battle, and war, and come near to the prom- 
ised land of peace, into which he might not pass over. 
Who shall recount our martyr's sufferings for this people ? 
Since the November of 1S60, his horizon has been black 
with storms. By day and by night, he trod a way of 
danger and darkness. On his shoulders rested a govern- 



BEECHER. 35 

ment dearer to him than his own life. At its integrity i 
millions of men were striking at home. Upon this govern- 
ment foreign eyes lowered. It stood like a lone island in 
a sea full of storms ; and evefy tide and wave seemed 
eager to devour it. Upon thousands of hearts great sor- 
rows and anxieties have rested, but not on one such, and 
in such measure, as upon that simple, truthful, noble soul, 
our faithful and sainted Lincoln. .Never rising to the en- 
thusiasm of more impassioned natures in hours of hope, 
and never sinking with the mercurial in hours of defeat to 
the depths of despondency, he held on with immovable 
patience and fortitude, putting caution against hope, that 
it might not be premature, and hope against caution, that 
it might not yield to dread and danger. He wrestled 
ceaselessly, through four black and dreadful purgatorial 
years, wherein God was cleansing the sin of his "people 
as by fire. 

At last, the watcher beheld the gray dawn for the coun- 
try. The mountains began to give forth their forms from 
out the darkness ; and the East came rushing toward us 
with arms full of joy for all our sorrows. Then it was for 
him to be glad exceedingly, that had sorrowed immeas- 
urably. Peace could bring to no other heart such joy, 
such rest, such honor, such trust, such gratitude. But he 
looked upon it as Moses looked upon the promised land. 
Then the wail of a nation proclaimed that he had gone 
from among us. JSTot thine the sorrow, but ours, sainted 
soul. Thou hast indeed entered the promised land, while 
we are yet on the march. To us remains the rocking of 
the deep, the storm upon the land, days of duty and nights 
of watching ; but thou art sphered high above all dark- 



36 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

ness and fear, beyond all sorrow and weariness. Rest, oh 
weary heart ! Rejoice exceedingly, thou that hast enough 
suffered ! Thou hast beheld Him who invisibly led thee 
in this great wilderness. Thou standest among the elect. 
Around thee are the royal men that have enobled human 
life in every age. Kingly art though, with glory on thy 
brow as a diadem. And joy is upon thee for ever more. 
Over all this land, over all the little cloud of years that 
now from thine infinite horizon moves back as a speck, thou 
art lifted up as high as the star is above the clouds that hide 
us, but never reach it. In the goodly company of Mount 
Zion thou shalt find that rest which thou hast sorrowing 
sought in vain ; and thy name, an everlasting name in 
heaven, shall flourish in fragrance and beauty as long as 
men shall last upon the earth, or hearts remain, to revere 
truth, fidelity, and goodness. 

Never did two such orbs of experience meet in one 
hemisphere, as the joy and the sorrow of the same week 
in this land. The joy was as sudden as if no man had ex- 
pected it, and as entrancing as if it had fallen a sphere 
from heaven. It rose up over sobriety, and swept busi- 
ness from its moorings, and ran down through the land in 
irresistible course. Men embraced each other in brother- 
hood that were strangers in the ilesh. They sang, or 
prayed, or, 'deeper yet, many could only think thanks- 
giving and weep gladness. That peace was sure ; that 
government was firmer than ever; that the land was 
cleansed of plague ; that the ages were opening to our 
footsteps, and we were to begin a inarch of blessings ; 
that blood was staunched, and scowling enmities were 
-inking like storms beneath the horizon; that the dear 



BEECHEE. 37 

fatherland, nothing lost, much gained, was to rise up in 
unexampled honor among the nations of the earth — these 
thoughts, and that unclistinguishable throng of fancies, 
and hopes, and desires, and yearnings, that filled the soul 
with tremblings like the heated air of midsummer days — 
all these kindled up such a surge of joy as no words may 
describe. 

In one hour joy lay without a pulse, without a gleam, 
or breath. A sorrow came that swept through the land as 
huge storms sweep through the forest and field, rolling 
thunder along the sky, disheveling the flowers, daunting 
every singer in thicket or forest, and pouring blackness 
and darkness across the land and up the mountains. Did 
ever so many hearts, in so brief a time, touch two such 
boundless feelings ? It was the uttermost of joy ; it was 
the uttermost of sorrow — noon and midnight, without a 
space between. 

The blow brought not a sharp pang. It was so terrible 
that at first it stunned sensibility. Citizens were like men 
awakened at midnight by an earthquake, and bewildered 
to find everything that they were accustomed to trust 
wavering and falling. The very earth was no longer solid. 
The first feeling was the least. Men waited to get straight 
to feel. They wandered in the streets as if groping after 
some impending dread, or undeveloped sorrow, or some 
one to tell them what ailed them. They met each other 
as if each would ask the other, " Am I awake, or do I 
dream?" There was a piteous helplessness. Strong men 
bowed down and wept. Other and common griefs belonged 
to some one in chief: this belonged to all. It was each 
and every man's. Every virtuous household in the land 



38 • DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

felt as if its first-born were gone. Men were bereaved, 
and walked for daj^s as if a corpse lay unburied in their 
dwellings. There was nothing else to think of. They 
could speak of nothing but that ; and yet, of that they 
could speak only falteringly. All business was laid aside. 
Pleasure forgot to smile. The city for nearly a week 
ceased to roar. The great Leviathan lay down, and was 
still. Even avarice stood still, and greed was strangely 
moved to generous sympathy and universal sorrow. Rear 
to his name monuments, found charitable institutions, and 
write his name above their lintels ; but no monument will 
ever equal the universal, spontaneous, and sublime sorrow 
that in a moment swept down lines and j^arties, and 
covered up animosities, and in an hour brought a divided 
people into unity of grief and indivisible fellowship of 
anguish. 

For myself, I cannot yet command that quietness of 
spirit needed for a just and temperate delineation of a 
man whom goodness has made great. Leaving that, if it 
please God, to some other occasion, I pass to some consid- 
erations, aside from the martyr President's character, which 
may be fit for this hour's instruction. 

1. Let us not mourn that his departure was so sudden, 
nor fill our imagination with horror at its method. Men, 
long eluding and evading sorrow, when at last they are 
overtaken by it, seem enchanted, and seek to make their 
sorrow sorrowful to the very uttermost, and to bring out 
every drop of suffering which they possibly can. This is 
not Christian, though it may be natural. When good 
men pray for deliverance from sudden death, it is only 
that they may not be plunged without preparation, all 



BEECHER. 39 

disrobed, into the presence of their Judge. "When one is 
ready to depart, suddenness of death is a blessing. It is a 
painful sight to see a tree overthrown by a tornado, 
wrenched from its foundations, and broken down like a 
weed; but it is yet more painful to see a vast and vener- 
able tree lingering with vain strife against decay, which 
age and infirmity have marked for destruction. The 
process by which strength wastes, and the mind is 
obscured, and the tabernacle is taken down, is humiliating 
and painful ; and it is good and grand when a man departs 
to his rest from out of the midst of duty, full-armed and 
strong, with pulse beating time. For such an one to go 
suddenly, if he be prepared to go, is but to terminate a 
most noble life in its most noble manner. Mark the 
words of the Master : 

" Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burn- 
ing; and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their 
lord, when he will return from the wedding ; that when 
he cometh and knocketh they may open unto him imme- 
diately. Blessed are those servants whom the lord when 
he cometh shall find watching." 

Not they that go in a stupor, but they that go with all 
their powers about them, and wide-awake, to meet their 
Master, as to a wedding, are blessed. He died watching. 
He died with his armor on. In the midst of hours of 
labors, in the very heart of patriotic consultations, just 
returned from camps and councils, he was stricken down. 
No fever dried his blood. No slow waste consumed him. 
All at once, in full strength and manhood, with his girdle 
tight about him, he departed, and walks with God. 

Nor was the manner of his death more shocking, if we 



40 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

divest it of the malignity of the motives which caused it. 
The mere instrument itself is not one that we should 
shrink from contemplating. Have not thousands of sol- 
diers fallen on the field of battle by the bullets of the 
enemy ? Is being killed in battle counted to be a dreadful 
mode of dying? It was as if he had died in battle. Do 
not all soldiers that must fall ask to depart in the hour of 
battle and victory ? He went in the hour of victory. 

There has not been a poor drummer-boy in all this war 
that has fallen for whom the great heart of Lincoln would 
not have bled ; there has not been one private soldier, 
without note or name, slain among thousands, and hid in 
the pit among hundreds, without even the memorial of a 
separate burial, for whom the President would not have 
wept. He was a man from the common people that never | 
forgot his kind. And now that he who might not bear I 
the inarch, and toil, and battles with these humble citi- 
zens has been called to die by the bullet, as they were, do 
you not feel that there was a peculiar fitness to his nature 
and life, that he should in death be joined with them, in a 
final common experience, to whom he had been joined in 
all his sympathies. 

For myself, when any event is susceptible of a higher 
and nobler garnishing, I know not what that disposition 
is that should seek to drag it down to the depths of gloom, 
and write it all over with the scrawls of horror or fear. 
I let the light of nobler thoughts fall upon his departure, 
and bless God that there is some argument of consolation 
in the matter and manner of his going, as there was in 
the matter and manner of his staying. 

2. This blow was but the expiring rebellion. As a 



BEECHEE. 41 

miniature gives all the form and features of its subject, so, 
epitomized in this foul act, we find the whole nature and 
disposition of slavery. It begins in a wanton destruction 
of all human rights, and in a desecration of all the sancti- 
ties of heart and home ; and it is the universal enemy of 
mankind, and of God, who made man. It can be main- 
tained only at the sacrifice of every right and moral 
feeling in its abettors and upholders. I deride the man 
that points me to any man bred amid slavery, believing 
in it, and willingly practicing it, and tells me that he is a 
man. I shall find saints in perdition sooner than I shall 
find true manhood under the influences of so accursed a 
system as this. It is a two-edged sword, cutting both ways, 
violently destroying manhood in the oppressed, and insidi- 
ously destroying manhood in the oppressor. The problem 
is solved, the demonstration is completed, in our land. 
Slavery wastes its victims; and it destroys the masters. 
It destroys public morality, and the possibility of it. It 
corrupts manhood in its very centre and elements. Com- 
munities in which it exists are not to be trusted. They 
are rotten. Nor can you find timber grown in this accursed 
soil of iniquity that is fit to build our ship of state, or lay 
the foundation of our households. The patriotism that 
grows up under this blight, when put to proof, is selfish 
and brittle ; and he that leans upon it shall be pierced. 
The honor that grows up in the midst of slavery is not 
honor, but a bastard quality that usurps the place of its 
better, only to disgrace the name of honor. And, as long 
as there is conscience, or reason, or Christianity, the honor 
that slavery begets will be a bye-word and a hissing. 
The whole moral nature of men reared to familiarity and 



42 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

connivance with slavery is death-smitten. The needless 
rebellion ; the treachery of its leaders to oaths and solemn 
trusts ; their violation of the commonest principles of 
fidelity, sitting in senates, in councils, in places of public 
confidence, only to betray and to destroy ; the long, gene- 
ral, and unparalleled cruelty to prisoners, without provo- 
cation, and utterly without excuse : the unreasoning- 
malignity and fierceness — these all mark the symptoms 
of that disease of slavery which is a deadly poison to soul 
and body. 

1. I do not say that there are not single natures, here and 
there, scattered through the vast wilderness- which is 
covered with this poisonous vine, who escape the poison. 
There are, but they are not to be found among the men 
that believe in it, and that have been moulded by it. They 
are the exceptions. Slavery is itself barbarity. That 
nation which cherishes it is barbarous ; and no outward 
tinsel or glitter can redeem it from the charge of barbar- 
ism. And it was fit that its expiring blow should be 
such as to take away from men the last forbearance, the 
last pity, and fire the soul with an invincible determina- 
tion that the breeding-ground of such mischiefs and monsters 
shall be utterly and forever destroyed. 

2. We needed not that he should put on paper that he 
believed in slavery, who, with treason, with murder, with 
cruelty infernal, hovered around that majestic man to 
destroy his life. He was himself but the long sting with 
which slavery struck at liberty ; and he carried the poison 
that belonged to slavery. And as long as this nation lasts, 
it will never be forgotten that we have, had one martyred 
President — never ! Never, while time lasts, while heaven 



BEECHER. 43 

lasts, while hell rocks and groans, will it be forgotten that 
slavery, by its minions, slew him, and, in slaying him, 
made manifest its whole nature and tendency. 

3. This blow was aimed at the life of the Government 
and of the nation. Lincoln was slain ; America was 
meant. The man was cast down ; the Government was 
smitten at. The President was killed : it was national 
life, breathing freedom, and meaning beneficence, that 
was sought. He, the man of Illinois, the private man, 
divested of robes and the insignia of authority, represent- 
ing nothing but his personal self, might have been hated ; 
but it was not that that ever would have called forth the 
murderer's blow. It was because he stood in the place of 
government, representing government, and a government 
that represented right and liberty, that he was singled out. 

This, then, is a crime against universal government. It 
is not a blow at the foundations of our government, more 
than at the foundations of the English Government, of the 
French Government, of every compacted and well-organ- 
ized government. It was a crime against mankind. The 
whole world will repudiate and stigmatize it as a deed 
without a shade of redeeming light. For this was not the 
oppressed, goaded to extremity, turning on his oppressor. 
Not the shadow of a cloud, even, has rested on the South, of 
wrong ; and they knew it right well. 

In a council held in the City of Charleston, just pre- 
ceding to the attack on Fort Sumter, two commissioners 
were appointed to go to Washington ; one on the part of 
the army from Fort Sumter, and one on the part of the 
Confederates. The lieutenant that was designated to go 
for us said it seemed to him that it would be of little use 



44 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

for him to go, as his opinion was immovably fixed in favor 
of maintaining the Government in whose service he was 
employed. Then Gov. Pickens took him aside, detaining, 
for an hour and a half, the railroad train that was to con- 
vey them on their errand. He opened to him the whole 
plan and secret of the Southern conspiracy, and said to 
him, distinctly and repeatedly (for it was needful, he said, 
to lay aside disguises), that the South had never been 
wronged, and that all their pretences of grievance in the 
matter of tariffs, or anything else, were invalid. " But," 
said he, " we must carry the people with us ; and we allege 
these things, as all statesmen do many things that they 
do not believe, because they are the only instruments by 
which the people can be managed." He then and there 
declared that the two sections of country were so antago- 
nistic in ideas and policies that they could not live 
together, that it was foreordained that Northern and 
Southern men must keep apart on account of differences 
in ideas and policies, and that all the pretences of the 
South about wrongs suffered were but pretences, as they 
very well knew. This is testimony which was given b}^ one 
of the leaders in the rebellion, and which will, probably, 
ere long, be given under hand and seal to the public. So 
the South has never had wrong visited upon it except by 
that which was inherent in it. 

This was not, then, the avenging hand of one goaded by 
tyranny. It was not a despot turned on by his victim. 
It was the venomous hatred of liberty wielded by an 
avowed advocate of slavery. And, though there may 
have been cases of murder in which there were shades of 
palliation, yet this murder was without provocation, with- 



BEECHER. 45 

out temptation, without reason, sprung from the fury of a 
heart cankered to all that was just and good, and cor- 
rupted by all that was wicked and foul. 

4. The blow has signally failed. The cause is not 
stricken : it is strengthened. This nation has dissolved — 
but in tears only. It stands four-square, more solid, to-day, 
than any pyramid in Egypt. This people are neither 
wasted, nor daunted, nor disordered. Men hate slavery 
and love liberty with stronger hate and love to-day than 
ever before. The Government is not weakened, it is made 
stronger. How naturally and easily were the ranks 
closed! Another stepped forward, in the hour that the 
one fell, to take his place and his mantle ; and I avow my 
belief that he will be found a man true to every instinct 
of liberty ; true to the whole trust that is reposed in him ; 
vigilant of the Constitution ; careful of the laws ; wise 
for liberty, in that he himself, through his life, has known 
what it was to suffer from the stings of slavery, and to 
prize liberty from bitter personal experiences. [Applause.] 

Where could the head of government in any monarchy 
be smitten down by the hand of an assassin, and the 
funds not quiver nor fall one-half of one per cent ? After 
a long period of national disturbance, after four years of 
drastic war, after tremendous drafts on the resources of 
the country, in the height and top of our burdens, the 
heart of this people is such that now, when the head of 
government is stricken down, the public funds do not 
waver, but stand as the granite ribs in our mountains. 

Republican institutions have been vindicated in this ex- 
perience as they never were before ; and the whole history 
of the last four years, rounded up by this cruel stroke 



46 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

seems, in the providence of God, to have been clothed, 
now, with an illustration, with a sympathy, with an apt- 
ness, and with a significance, such as we never could have 
expected nor imagined. God, I think, has said, by the 
voice of this event, to all nations of the earth, " Republi- 
can liberty, based upon true Christianity, is firm as the 
foundation of the globe." [Applause.] 

5. Even he who now sleeps has, by this event, been 
clothed with new influence. Dead, he speaks to men who 
now willingly hear what before they refused to listen to. 
Now his simple and weighty words will be gathered like 
those of Washington, and your children, and your child- 
ren's children, shall be taught to ponder the simplicity and 
deep wisdom of utterances which, in their time, passed, in 
party heat, as idle words. Men will receive a new im- 
pulse of patriotism for his sake, and will guard with zeal 
the whole country which he loved so well. 1 swear you, 
on the altar of his memory, to be more faithful to the 
country for which he has perished. [Applause.] They 
will, as they follow his hearse, swear a new hatred to that 
slavery against which he warred, and which, in vanquish- 
ing him, has made him a martyr and a conqueror. I 
swear you, by the memory of this martyr, to hate slavery 
with an unappeasable hatred. [Applause.] They will 
admire and imitate the firmness of this man, his inflexible 
conscience for the right ; and yet his gentleness, as tendei 
as a woman's, his moderation of spirit, which, not all tliG 
heat of party could inflame, nor all the jars and disturb- 
ances of this country shake out of its place. I swear you 
to an emulation of his justice, his moderation, and his 
mercy. 

You I cam comfort ; but how can I speak to that twi- 



BEECHER. 47 

light million to whom his name was as the name of an 
angel of God ? There will be Availing in places which no 
minister shall be able to reach. When, in hovel and in 
cot, in wood and in wilderness, in the fi Ad throughout the 
South, the dusky children, who looked upon him as that 
Moses whom God sent before them to lead them out of the 
land of bondage, learn that he has fallen, who shall com- 
fort them % O, thou Shepherd of Israel, that didst 
comfort thy people of old, to thy care we commit the 
helpless, the long-wronged, and grieved. 

And now the martyr is moving in triumphal march, 
mightier than when alive. The nation rises up at every 
stage of his coming. Cities and states are his pall-bearers, 
and the cannon beats the hours with solemn progression. 
Dead, dead, dead, he yet speaketh ! Is Washington dead ? 
Is Hampden dead ? Is David dead ? Is any man that 
ever was fit to live dead \ Disenthralled of flesh, and 
risen in the unobstructed sphere where passion never comes, 
he begins his illimitable work. His life now is grafted 
upon the infinite, and will be fruitful as no earthly life 
can be. Pass on, thou that hast overcome ! Your sorrows, 
oh people, are his peace! Your bells, and bands, and 
muffled drums, sound triumph in his ear. Wail and weep 
here ; God makes it echo joy and triumph there. Pass 
on! 

Four years ago, oh, Illinois, we took from your midst 
an untried man, and from among the people. We return 
him to you a mighty conqueror. Not thine any more, 
but the nation's ; not ours, but the world's. Give him 
place, oh, -ye prairies! In the midst of this great con- 
tinent his dust shall rest, a sacred treasure to myriads who 



48 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

shall pilgrim to that shrine to kindle anew their zeal and 
patriotism. Ye winds that move over the mighty places 
of the West, chant his requiem ! Ye people, behold a 
martyr whose blood, as so many articulate words, pleads 
for fidelity, for law, for liberty ! 



SERMON III. 



EEV. HENRY W. BELLOWS, D. D. 



" Sorrow hath filled your heart. Nevertheless, I will tell you the truth. 
It is expedient for you that I go away ; for if I go not away, the Comforter 
will not come unto you ; but if I depart I will send him unto you." — St. 
John xvi. 6, 7. 

So Jesus, in view of his own approaching death, com- 
forted his disciples ! He was to leave them, robbed b} r 
violence of their accustomed leader ; he whom they had 
believed should redeem Israel, snatched wickedly and igno- 
miniously from their side ; all their hopes of prosperity and 
power in this world utterly destroyed. He was to leave 
them a dismayed and broken-hearted band, terror-stricken 
and scattered abroad, the enemies of their beloved Lord 
triumphant over him ; his words and teachings as yet in- 
volved in obscurity and mystery ; their souls ungrown in 
his likeness ; the nature of their Master's errand in this 
world not yet understood — nay, misunderstood almost as 
sadly by his disciples as by the Jews who murdered him. 
Knowing, as our Saviour did, just how they were to be 
affected by his death, how utterly appalled and bewildered, 
he still tells them, " It is expedient for you that I go away, 
for if I go not away the Comforter (who should abide with 
them forever) will not come unto you ; but if I depart I 
will send him unto you.'' 



O » DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

We understand now, looking back nineteen centuries, 
how truly Jesus spake. We see that without that death 
there could not have been that resurrection from the dead ; 
that Jesus Christ was revealed to his disciples as a spirit- 
ual prince and deliverer, as Lord over the grave and king 
of saints immortal, in the defeat of all ambitions having 
their seat in this world ; that he died to prove that death 
was not the end of being, but the real beginning of a true 
life ; rose again to show that if it was " appointed unto all 
men once to die," it was not because fate and matter were 
stronger than spirit, or because death was inevitable, but 
simply because thus man broke out of fleshly garments into 
a higher mode of existence. We see now that he finally 
left his disciples, and ascended into heaven, to show them 
that absence in the flesh is often only a greater nearness of 
the spirit — that his power to enlighten, guide, animate, 
and bless them — yes, to comfort and cheer them — was 
greater as an unseen Saviour, sitting at the right hand of 
God, than as a present incarnate Master, in whose bosom 
John could lie, and into whose side and into the prints 
of the nails Thomas could thrust his doubting fingers. 
And what he promised he fully performed ! The Cruci- 
fixion which darkened the heavens with its gloom, gave 
way to the Resurrection, which not only broke Christ's 
own tomb and the tombs of many saints, but slew the An- 
gel of Death himself, leaving him only the mock dignity 
of a name without reality, which let into the Apostles' 
minds, and through them into the world, their first con- 
ception of the utter spirituality of Christ's kingdom ; con- 
verted them from Jews into Christians; indeed, began the 
new era, and from ordinary fishermen created those glori- 



BELLOWS. 51 

ous, sublime Apostles, whose teachings, character, deeds, 
and sufferings built up the Church on the chief corner- 
stone, and established our holy religion in the world. 

And it was not only expedient for Jesus Christ to die, 
that he might rise again clothed with his conquest over 
the grave, his victory over the doubts and fears of his dis- 
ciples, and the bold predictions and short triumph of his 
murderers — but expedient for him, in his ascension, to go 
away utterly from all bodily presence with his disciples 
and followers, drawing their thoughts and affections after 
him into the unseen world. Thus alone could Jesus keep 
the minds and hearts of his disciples wide open and 
stretched to the full compass of his spiritual religion — 
keep them from closing in again with their narrow earthly 
horizon — keep them from falling back into schemes of 
worldly hope— from substituting fondness for and devotion 
to his visible person, for that elevated, spiritual consecra- 
tion to his spirit and his commandments, on which their 
future high and holy influence depended. Jesus went 
away, that the Christ might return to be the anointing, 
and illumination, and Comforter of his disciples. His 
nearest friends never knew him till he had wholly gone 
away. They never loved him till he was beyond their 
embraces. John, lying in his bosom, was not as near his 
heart as thousands of his humblest disciples have been, who 
have had Christ formed within them by communion with 
his Holy Spirit. That going away created and inspired 
the Apostles, who, under God and Christ, created and in- 
spired the Church. Jesus shook off his Judaic, his local, 
and his merely human character, and became the universal 
Son of Man, the native of all countries, the contemporary 



52 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

of all times and eras, the ubiquitous companion and com- 
mon Saviour. His death, his resurrection, his ascension, 
rehearsed and symbolized the common and sublime des- 
tiny of humanity. Man is mortal, and must die ; man is 
immortal, and must rise again; man is a spirit, and must 
quit the limitations of earth and sense, to dwell with God 
in a world of spiritual realities. 

Thus Jesus honored the flesh he took upon himself, and 
the world he lived in ; honored by accepting the universal 
lot of life and death. But at the same time that he hon- 
ored our visible conditions and circumstances, he dis- 
crowned them of their assumed sovereignty over us by 
triumphing over the grave, and returning in the flesh to 
life and to its duties and necessities, and then, finally, he 
lifted man above not only the grave, but above time and 
sense, matter and affairs, by ascending into the unseen 
world, as into a more real state of existence, and promis- 
ing from that invisible seat to conduct the triumph of his 
Church, to visit and cheer the hearts of his disciples, and 
to be with them until the end of the world, when his 
kino-dom should come fullv, and God's will be done in 
earth as in heaven. Then he would deliver the kingdom 
up unto the father, that God might be all in all. 

And has it not, indeed, been so ? The Comforter has 
come ! He came to the Apostles, and wiped away their 
doubts and fears, their personal ambitions, their Jewish 
prejudices, their self-seeking and self-saving thoughts ! 
For tongues that spake only the dialects of their local ex- 
perience, it gives them tongues of fire, burning with an 
eloquence intelligible in all lands and all ages. 

And what but a Holy Spirit, a descending Saviour, 



BELLOWS. 53 

taking of the things of God and showing them unto men, 
has been the strength and salvation of human hearts from 
that hour to this ? How has the Master's influence grown, 
how mighty his consolations, how irresistible the inspira- 
tions of his grace and truth ! Buried in catacombs, over- 
whelmed with the wrath of mighty kings and princes, re- 
sisted and withstood by all the pride of philosophers and 
sages, protested by the vulgar senses and denied by the 
coarse appetites of man — the holy faith, planted in Christ's 
broken tomb, has withstood the rigors of every climate, 
outlived the swords and axes that have turned their edge 
against it, the hoofs of horses and the iron heels of mailed 
hosts that have trampled it in the dust, been nourished by 
the blood of the martyrs that died for its glory and de- 
fence, and has overrun the very cities that slew its Apos- 
tles, crossed oceans unknown to the empires that defiled or 
despised it, become the glory and hope of a civilization, 
known only by its name ! The Comforter indeed ! What 
visible bodily master could visit every day the millions of 
homes that the ascended Christ now takes in the daily 
circuit of his divine walk \ And what lips could articu- 
late the unspeakable wisdom he distills into lowly hearts 
that feel, but can never tell, the joy and trust and truth 
he imparts ? Ah ! the best part of the Gospel is that 
Word which cannot be uttered, but which comes and abides 
with the believing soul — that tender experience of a life 
hidden with Christ in God, which it is no more given to 
reveal in language, than it is given to describe the things 
which God hath prepared for them that love him ! Yes ! 
on this holy Easter morning ! when the mild spring air is 
full of God's quickening love, and the breeze goes whis- 
pering in the ear of every dry root and quivering stalk, 



54 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

the promise of a new life, a glorious resurrection, is there 
not a winged but viewless Comforter, noiselessly fluttering 
in at the windows of all Christian homes, and gently stir- 
ring in the hearts that have inherited their fathers' faith, 
the blessed assurance of God's eternal love ; of the soul's 
superiority to time and sense, to death and hell ; of the 
supporting presence of a Saviour's love and care, with all 
the gracious invitations, encouragements, and comforts that 
breathe from the Gospels, vital with the spirit and life, the 
death and resurrection of him whose history they record ? 
Can we read the New Testament to-day and feel that it is 
only common print that we peruse ? Are Christ's living 
words only remembered phrases ? or do we seem to hear 
them spoken from heaven by him who is the Word of 
God, and with a music and a meaning that all " the harp- 
ers, harping witli their harps," could not intensity or 
sweeten, making our souls burn within us as when of old 
he walked and talked by the way, at Emmaus, with his 
disciples ? 

It is, dear brethren, the faith, and hope, and trust of 
those inspired by the Comforter Jesus sent, that enables 
us to confront without utter dismay the appalling visita- 
tion that has just fallen with such terrible suddenness upon 
the country and the national cause ! With a heart almost 
withered, a brain almost paralyzed by the shock, I turn in 
vain for consolation to any other than the Comforter. 
Just as we were wreathing the laurels of our victories and 
the chaplets of our peace in with the Easter flowers that 
bloom around the empty sepulchre of our ascended Lord; 
just as we were preparing the fit and luminous celebration 
of a nation's joy in its providential deliverance from a 
most bloody and costly war, and feeling that the Resur- 



BELLOWS. 55 

rection of Christ was freshly and gloriously interpreted by 
the rising of our smitten, humiliated, reviled, and crucified 
country, buried in the distrust of foreign nations and the 
intentions of rebel hearts ; a country rising from the tomb, 
where she had left as discarded grave-clothes, the accursed 
vestments of slavery that had poisoned, enfeebled, and 
nearly destroyed her first life ; a country rising to a higher, 
purer existence, under the guidance of a chief whom it 
fondly thought sent from above to lead it cautiously, 
wisely, conscientiously, successfully, like another Moses, 
through the Red Sea into its promised land ; just then, at 
the proud moment when the nation, its four years of con- 
flict fully rounded, had announced its ability to diminish 
its armaments, withdraw its call for troops and its restric- 
tions on intercourse, comes as out of a clear heaven the 
thunderbolt that pierces the tender, sacred head that we 
were ready to crown with a nation's blessings, while trust- 
ing to its wisdom and gentleness, its faithfulness and pru- 
dence, the closing up of the country's wounds, and the 
appareling of the nation, her armor laid aside, in the 
white robes of peace. • 

Our beloved President, who had enshrined himself not 
merely in the confidence, the respect, and the gratitude of 
the people, but in their very hearts, as their true friend, 
adviser, representative, and brother; whom the nation 
loved as much as it revered ; who had soothed our angry 
impatience in this fearful struggle with his gentle modera- 
tion and passionless calm ; who had been the head of the 
nation, and not the chief of a successful party; and had 
treated our enemies like rebellious children, and not as 
foreign foes, providing even in their chastisement for 



56 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

mercy and penitent restoration ; our prudent, firm, hum- 
ble, reverential, God-fearing President is dead ! 

The assassin's hand has reached him who was belted 
round with a nation's devotion, and whom a million sol- 
diers have hitherto encircled with their watchful guardian- 
ship. Panoplied in honesty and simplicity of purpose, too 
universally well-disposed to believe in danger to himself, 
free from ambition, self-consequence and show, he has 
always shown a fearless heart, gone often to the front, 
made himself accessible to all at home, trusted the people, 
joined their amusements, answered their summons, and 
laid himself open every day to the malice and murderous 
chances of domestic foes. It seemed as if no man could 
raise his hand against that meek ruler, or confront with 
purpose of injury that loving eye, that sorrow-stricken 
face, ploughed with care, and watchings, and tears. So 
marked with upright, patient purposes of good to all, of 
justice and mercy, of sagacious roundabout wisdom, was 
his homely, paternal countenance, that I do not wonder 
that his murderer killed him from behind, and could not 
face the look that would have disarmed him in the very 
moment of his criminal madness. 

But he has gone ! Abraham Lincoln, President of the 
United States during the most difficult, trying, and im- 
portant period of the nation's history ; safe conductor of 
our policy through a crisis such as no other people ever 
had to pass ; successful summoner of a million and a quar- 
ter of American citizens to arms in behalf of their flag and 
their Union ; author of the Proclamation of Emancipation ; 
the people's President ; the heir of "Washington's place at 
the hearths and altars of the land ; the legitimate idol of 



BELLOWS. 57 

the negro race ; the perfect type of American democracy ; 
the astute adviser of our generals in the field ; the careful 
student of their strategy, and their personal friend and in- 
spirer ; the head of his Cabinet, prevailing, by the passion- 
less simplicity of his integrity and unselfish patriotism, 
over the larger experience, the more brilliant gifts, the 
more vigorous purposes of his constitutional advisers ; a 
President, indeed ; not the mere figure-head of the state, 
but its helmsman and pilot ; shrinking from no perplexity, 
magnanimous in self-accusation and in readiness to gather 
into his own bosom the spears of rebuke aimed at his 
counselors and agents ; the tireless servant of his place — 
no duty so small and wearisome that he shirked it, none 
so great and persistent that he sought to fling it upon 
others; the man who, fully tried, (not without fitful 
vacillations of public sentiment, which visited on him the 
difficulties of the times and the situation), tried through 
four years in which every quality of the man, the states- 
man, the Christian, was tested ; in the face of a jeering 
enemy, and foreign sneers, and domestic ribaldry, elected 
again by overwhelming majorities to be their chief and 
their representative during another term of office, in which 
it was supposed even superior qualities and services would 
be required to meet the nation's exigencies — this tried, 
this honored, this beloved head of the Government and 
the country is. alas ! suddenly snatched from us at the 
moment of our greatest need and our greatest joy, and 
taken up higher to his heavenly reward ! Thank God, he 
knew how the nation loved and reverenced him ; his re- 
election was the most solid proof of that which could pos- 
sibly have been given. He had tasted, too, the negro's 



58 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

pious gratitude, and tearful, glorious affection ! He had 
lived to give the order for ceasing our preparations for 
war — an act almost equivalent to proclaiming peace ! He 
had seen of the travail of his soul, and was satisfied. He 
had done the work of a life in his first term of service ; 
almost every clay of his second term, not forty days old, 
had been marked with victories, until no good news could 
have been received that would have much swelled his joy 
and honest pride ! And now, as the typical figure, the 
historic name of this great era, its glory rounded and full, 
the Almighty Wisdom has seen fit to close the record, and 
isolate the special work he has done, lest by any possible 
mischance the flawless beauty and symmetric oneness of 
the President's career should be impaired, its unique glory 
compromised by after issues, or its special lustre mixed 
with rays of another color, though it might be of an equal 
splendor ! 

The Past, at least, is secure ! Nothing can touch him 
further. Standing the central form in the field of this 
mighty, providential struggle, he fitly represents the 
purity, calmness, justice, and mercy of the loyal Ameri- 
can people ; their unconquered resolution to conquer 
secession and break slavery in pieces ; their sober, solid 
sense ; their religious confidence that God is on their side, 
and their cause the cause of universal humanity ! Let us 
be reconciled to the appointment which has released that 
weighty and patient head, that pathetic, tender heart, that 
worn and weary hand from the perplexing details of 
national rehabilitation. Let the lesser, meaner cares and 
anxieties of the country fall on other shoulders than those 
which have borne up the pillars of the nation when shaken 
with the earthquake. 



BELLOWS. 59 

And seeing it is God who has afflicted us, who doeth all 
things well, let us believe that it is expedient for us that 
our beloved chief should go away. He goes, to consecrate 
his work by flinging his life as well as his labors and his 
conscience, into the nation's cause. He that has cheered 
so many on to bloody sacrifice, found unexpected, surpris- 
ing opportunity, to give also his own blood ! He died, as 
truly as any warrior dies on the battle-field, in the nation's 
service, and shed his blood for her sake ! It was the na- 
tion that was aimed at by the bullet that stilled his aching 
brain. As the representative of a cause, the type of a vic- 
tory, he was singled out and slain ! His life and career 
now have the martyr's palm added to the statesman's, phi- 
lanthropist's, and patriot's crown. His place is sure in the 
innermost shrine of his country's gratitude. His name 
will match with Washington's, and go with it laden with 
blessings down to the remotest posterity. 

And may we not have needed this loss, in which we 
gain a national martyr and an ascended leader, to in- 
spire us from his heavenly seat, where with the other 
father of his country he sits in glory, while they send 
united benedictions and lessons of comfort and of guidance 
down upon their common children — may we not have 
needed this loss to sober our hearts in the midst of our 
national triumph, lest in the excess of our joy and our 
pride we should overstep the bounds of that prudence and 
the limits of that earnest seriousness which our affairs de- 
mand? We have stern and solemn duties yet to perform, 
great and anxious tasks to achieve. We must not, after 
ploughing the fields with the burning share of civil war, and 
fertilizing them with the blood and bones of a half million 
noble youth, lose the great harvest by wasting the short 



60 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

season of ingathering in festive joy at its promise and its 
fulness ! We have, perhaps, been prematurely glad. In 
the joy of seeing our haven in view we have been disposed 
to slacken the cordage and let the sails flap idly, and the 
hands go below, when the storm was not fairly over nor 
all the breakers out of sight ! God has startled us, to ap- 
prise us of our peril ; to warn us of possible mischances, 
and to caution us how we abuse our confidence and over- 
trust our enemy. I hope and pray that the nation may 
feel itself, by the dreadful calamity that has befallen it, 
summoned to its knees ; called to a still more pious sense 
of its dependence, toned up to its duties, and compelled to 
watch with the most eager patience the course of its gene- 
rals, its statesmen, and its press. It cannot be for anything 
short of the utmost importance, that the venerated and 
beloved head of this people and his chief counselor and 
companion have thus been brought low in an hour, one to 
his very grave, the other to the gates of death ! 

It would seem as if every element of tragic power and 
pathos were fated to enter into this rebellion, and mark it 
out forever as a warning to the world. It really began in 
the Senate House, when the bludgeon of South Carolina 
felled the State of Massachusetts and the honor of the 
Union in the person of a brave and eloquent senator. The 
shot at Fort Sumter was not so truly the fatal beginning 
of the war as the blow in the Senate Chamber. That 
-blow proclaimed the barbarism, the cruelty, the steal thi- 
ness, the treachery, the recklessness of reason and justice, 
the contempt of prudence and foresight which a hundred 
years of legalized oppression and inhumanity had bred in 
the South ! And now, that blow, deepened into thunder, 
echoes from the head of the Chief Magistrate, as if slavery 



BELLOWS. 61 

could not be dismissed forever, until her barbaric cruelty, 
her reckless violence, her political blasphemy had illus- 
trated itself upon the most conspicuous arena, under the 
most damning lijrht and the most memorable and unfor- 
getable circumstances in which crime was ever yet com- 
mitted ! 

And in the same hour that the thoughtful, meek, and 
careworn head of the President was smitten to death, a 
head that had sunk to its pillow for so many months full 
of unembittered, gentle, conciliatory, yet anxious and 
watchful thoughts — the neck on which that President had 
leaned with an affectionate confidence that was half wo- 
manly, during all his administration, was assailed with 
the bowie-knife, which stands for Southern vengeance and 
slavery's natural weapon ! The voice of the free ^North, 
the tongue and throat of liberty, was fitly assailed, when 
blavery and secession would exhibit her dying feat of ma- 
lignant revenge. Through the channels of that neck had 
flowed for thirty years the temperate, persistent, strong, 
steady currents of this nation's resistance to the encroach- 
ments of the slave power, of this people's aspirations for 
release from the curse and the peril of a growing race of 
slaves. That throat had voiced the nation's great argu- 
ment in the Senate Chamber. The arm that had written 
the great series of letters which defended the nation from 
the schemes of foreign diplomatists, was already accident- 
ally broken ; the jaw that had so eloquently moved was 
dislocated too ; but slavery remembered the neck that 
bowed not when most others were bent to her power ; re- 
membered the throat that was vocal in her condemnation 
when most others in public life were silent from policy or 



62 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

fear ; remembered the words of him who, more than any 
man, slew her with his tongue ; and so her last assault was 
upon the jugular veins of the Secretary of State. Her 
bloodhounds sprang at the throat of him who had denied 
their right and broken their power to spring at the neck 
of the slave himself ! 

But thus far, thank God, slavery is baffled in her last 
effort. Mr. Seward lives to tell us what no man knows so 
well — the terrible perils through which we have passed at 
home and abroad ; lives to tell us the goodness, the wis- 
dom, the piety of the President he was never weary of 
praising. " He is the best man I ever knew," he said to 
me, a year ago. What a eulogy from one so experienced, 
so acute, so wise, so gentle ! Ah, brethren, the head of 
the Government is gone ; but he who knew his counsels 
and was his other self, still lives, and may God hear to-day 
a nation's prayer for his life. 

Meanwhile Heaven rejoices this Easter morning in the 
resurrection of our lost leader, honored in the day of his 
death ; dying on the anniversary of our Lord's great sacri- 
fice, a miffhfy sacrifice himself for the sins of a whole 
people. 

We will not grudge him his release, or selfishly recall 
him from his rest and his reward ! The only un pitied 
object in this national tragedy, he treads to-day the courts 
of light, radiant with the joy that even in Heaven cele- 
brates our Saviour's resurrection from the dead ! The 
sables we hang in our sanctuaries and streets have no 
place where he is ! His hearse is plumed with a nation's 
grief; his resurrection is hailed with the songs of revolu- 
tionary patriots, of soldiers that have died for their coun- 



BELLOWS. 63 

try. He, the commander-in-chief, has gone to his army 
of the dead ! The patriot President has gone to our 
Washington ! The meek and lowly Christian is to-day 
with him who said on earth, " Come unto me, all ye that 
labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest," and 
who, rising to-day, fulfils his glorious words, " I am the 
resurrection and the life ; he that believeth in me, though 
he were dead, yet shall he live : and whoso liveth and 
believeth in me shall never die." 



SERMON IV. 



KEY. STEPHEN" H. TYXG, D. D. 



" And the king of Israel said unto Elisha, when he saw them, My father, 
shall I smite them ? shall I smite them ? And he answered, Thou shalt not 
smite them. Wouldst thou smite those whom thou hast taken captive with 
thy sword and with thy bow ? Set bread and w r ater before them, that they 
may eat and drink, and go to their master." — II Kixgs vi. 21, 

The point of this story is very manifest. The principle 
which it establishes is also very clear. The simple ques- 
tion proposed to the prophet and answered by him was: 
What shall be our treatment of an enemy subdued? One 
class of sentiment demands, in the very language of man's 
nature : " Shall I smite them ?" Another replies in the 
spirit of the divine teaching: "Set bread and water before 
them, and let them go." The combination of both would 
be in the analogy of the divine administration. " Behold 
the goodness and the severity of God." There are those 
involved in every such crisis, the sparing of whom is false 
to the true operation of mercy. There are those also, the 
punishing of whom would be an avenging undue to justice. 

Both mercy and justice derive their very nature and 
power from a proportionate discernment. When man 
describes either of them as blind and unlimited, he paints 
them as arbitrary, tyrannical, and unreasoning. In a just 
and equitable administration of government, whether dis- 



66 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

tributing its rewards or its penalties, there must be the 
most accurate discerning of varied responsibility. The 
leaders in crime should never be excused from the just 
penalty of their offence. The subordinates — subjects of 
relative influence, — victims of determined power, — often 
more sinned against than sinning — are never to be dealt 
with, — on the same plane of responsibility. For them, 
mercy delights to rejoice against judgment, and the high- 
est sovereignty may well display itself in the most complete 
forgiveness. 

In the story which lies before us now, four separate 
facts are very remarkable, and to our purpose extremely 
appropriate. I. The warfare was really against the God 
of Israel. II. The power which prevailed was the provi- 
dence of God. III. The victory attained was the gift of 
God. TV. The resulting treatment of the captives was 
the example of God. 

These are very important propositions in any earthly 
crisis. The field of their illustration was very limited in 
the history of Israel. The extent of the field, however, 
will not affect the propriety of their application. I deem 
them remarkably applicable to our own national condition. 
And as you require and expect me, on these occasions of 
a nation's worship, to speak on the subjects of the nation's 
interest, I shall freely speak of the elements and obliga- 
tions of the present crisis. I assume these four propositions 
as absolutely and minutely illustrated by our national 
condition. 

I. The warfare which this Southern rebellion has made 
on our Government and nation, has been really a warfare 
against God. Not Israel was more truly a nation divinely 



TYNG. 67 

collected, divinely governed, divinely commissioned, di- 
vinely prospered, than have been the United States of 
America. It is no boastful nationalism, to say that this 
nation, in its establishment and prosperity, was the last 
hope in a weary world that man could ever on earth enjoy 
a peaceful and protected liberty. This broad, unoccupied 
continent, which God had reserved for its possession, was 
the last open field of earth remaining on which to try the 
grand experiment of a moral, social, intellectual advance- 
ment of the peaceful poor of the human family. 

Freedom, education, orderly government, secure posses- 
sions, equal social rights, triumphant, stable law, universal 
possibility and prospect of advancement, complete freedom 
in man's personal relations to God, had been in all genera- 
tions, and among all people, flying before the violence of 
savage force and brutish selfishness. Here was the last 
possible opening for their peaceful conquest. Here only 
on earth could human welfare be attained, without the 
violence of destructive revolutions and the overthrow of 
nations in the confusion of war and blood. To make the 
other three quarters of the globe free and happy, demanded 
a process of previous destruction of reigning evil. To 
make America free, happy, and prosperous, required only 
that it should be settled in peace, prospered in liberty, and 
hallowed in prayer. If it could thus be settled with plants 
of renown, generations to come should gather from it the 
fruits of paradise and glory. 

The actual circumstances combining to make up the 
history of the settlement of this nation, were so peculiarly 
and remarkably an ordering and arrangement in divine 
providence, that I will not waste your time, or trifle with 



68 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

your intelligence, by demonstrating in detail the fact, that 
God had chosen this place and this people for a special 
exhibition of his own wisdom and goodness in the govern- 
ment of man, and for the accomplishment of great results 
in human happiness, which had been nowhere else attained. 
I should be ready to affirm that whoever warred with the 
integrity, prosperity, and onward growth of this nation, 
warred with the plans and purposes of God. 

But the warfare through which we have now passed, 
was organized expressly to overthrow the government and 
integrity of the American nation, for the establishment of 
local sectional sovereignties. It was avowed to be for the 
arrest and destruction of the dominion of universal liberty, 
and for the maintenance and perpetuation of American 
slavery. It was to establish a perpetual degradation of 
honorable labor and of the hard-toiling laboring classes, 
by making the capital of wealth the owner of the labor of 
poverty. It was to create and maintain a repulsive rival- 
ship of distinct and contending peoples, in the place of one, 
united, and mutually sustaining nation. It was to over- 
turn the whole power which this nation was exercising as 
a nation, to bless and exalt the earth, by breaking it up 
into inferior and inefficient communities, an example of 
good to none, a probable curse to all. 

I cannot conceive of a warfare, in its inauguration and 
purpose, more completely against the purposes and the 
commands of the Most High. If we could imagine its 
success in the accomplishment of these avowed purposes 
of this rebellion, it would be impossible to calculate, in 
human reasoning, the sorrows which it would have 
brought upon a laboring earth. It would have been the 



TYNG. 69 

success of savage, bloodthirsty hatred, over all the arts of 
peace, and the employments and habits of patient and 
civilized men. It would have been the triumph of murder 
and cruelty, in spirit and habit, intensified by the pride 
of power, over all the barriers of law and the restraints of 
opinion. It would have been the overthrow of all the 
efforts of Christian benevolence, in the mere hardihood of 
selfish gain and acrid hostility. It would have been the 
ruin of the Christian Church, with all its associations for 
the spreading of the Gospel and honoring and establishing 
the Word of God. It would have spread a desolation, 
moral and physical, over this whole continent, devouring 
the hopes of coming generations, and blasting the anticipa- 
tions of future goodness and greatness to the children of 
men. 

The spirit, the mind, the heart of this rebellion have 
been displayed in the long-continued sufferings of the 
negro, — in the oppression and contempt of the poor 
whites, — in the native love of bloodshed, which has 
delighted in dueling and schooled itself in the skill of 
murder, — in the foulness of lust, which has left its fruits 
and marks in indelible monuments through the whole 
Southern country. They have now displayed themselves 
far more distinctly, but in an accordant manner, in the 
unprecedented and incredible cruelties which have been 
inflicted on our captive soldiers — deliberately planning the 
murder of thousands perfectly helpless, and the objects 
of pity to all other nations, by starvation, cruelty, and 
neglect. The whole exhibition of that people, as a 
people, has been so deeply, intensely wicked, that it was 
incredible, and was not and could not be believed, that 



70 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

such a race of men, within the limits of outward civiliza- 
tion, were to be found on earth. Their success would 
have been the most shocking social desolation and 
accumulated crime that the human race has ever seen. 

But even all this has not aroused the public sentiment 
of our nation to the conviction that we were really fight- 
ing the battles of the Lord against the enemies of man. 
And it has required this last ripened fruit of a demoniac 
hatred, in the shocking murder of the President of the 
Republic in the quietness of secure repose, and the cowardly 
assassination of his cabinet minister in the helplessness of 
a bed of sickness and suffering, long planned, encouraged 
and urged in public papers as a deed of honor, to make 
perfectly manifest that this whole warfare has been an 
assault of the most violent of men upon all that was 
orderly, conservative, and beneficent, in the gift of God 
and in the enjoyment of mankind. And no unprejudiced 
and impartial reader of history will hereafter, in his 
survey of the whole period, hesitate to say : " Never was 
there more clearly on earth an instance of that heavenly 
war, when Michael and his angels fought against the 
dragon, and Satan which deceiveth the whole world, was 
cast out into the earth." 

II. The power which has prevailed was the providence 
of God. The whole survey of this contest past has been 
a review of divine providence. The facts succeeding have 
been successive steps in this remarkable development of 
providence. The divine concealment of the real issue 
from the body of our people at the commencement of the 
struggle, was the opening line of this providence. How 
few were willing to accept the thought, that thus God 



TYNG. 



n 



would overturn the giant wrong of human slavery ! How 
few could look upon the apparently mad attempt of John 
Brown, in the feeling that he was, after all, the Wickliffe 
of the corning day — the morning star of a new reforma- 
tion ! We did not justify him ; we do not, — we need not 
justify him now. But we see him now as we dared not 
believe him then, opening a battle in a single duel, which 
should have no other end than the universal destruction 
of the slavery of man. 

We were then combining to contend for a Constitution 
as it was. We asked no change. How few imagined that 
we were to fight out its glorious amendment on the side 
of liberty, until the signature of every State to its adop- 
tion should be written in the blood of its noblest citizens 
and youth ! We then pressed a compensated emancipa- 
tion, and were ready to pay for it, at any conceivable 
price. How few could imagine that the States involved 
would madly refuse the offer, until God's peculiar plan 
should be wrought out, to let his captives go, but not by 
price or reward. 

JVIost slowly did even that wisest man among us, who 
has been the last great sacrifice upon the altar of liberty, 
reach even a measure of willingness that the issue of 
liberty should be in the war at all. And yet how persistently 
did this great issue rise, as much by reproachful objections 
against it, as by growing clearness of perception concern- 
ing it, till at last South and North combined to see that 
the one grand question for white and black, for bond and 
free, was that which they called " the everlasting negro." 

How completely hidden from our possible view was the 
extent of time and suffering to which the war should 



72 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

reach ! Could all its demands have been calculated and 
surveyed, how few would have been willing to embark 
upon a sea so troubled and apparently so hopeless ! We 
thought of thousands of precious lives. Who would have 
dared to confront the certainty of a million? On the 
one side was ample and long -planned preparation and 
thought, adequate material, and the edge of united purpose 
whetted to its utmost temper ; men that were prepared to 
fight, and determined to fight, not in a question of local 
liberty, but of universal conquest. On the other side was 
the habit of good-natured yielding of every thing for 
peace, a total want of preparation of material, a greater 
want even of spirit and desire to enter upon the contest. 
How gladly would they have made any concession and 
accepted any compromise, before the grand determination 
for the trial was wound up ! Years of defeat were in 
store ; apparently certain divisions were prepared ; men's 
hearts failed them when they looked at the things which 
were coming ; and yet all that they saw or imagined was 
but a mere toying with the great issue, when compared 
with the approaching reality, which they did not see. 

How wonderfully and unexpectedly was the union of 
the North created, by the very assault on Sumter which 
was to fire the Southern heart ! How few would have 
believed that all the Southern calculation upon a divided 
North, all the fears of mutual contests in our own streets, 
were to be put to rest for ever in the mere process of the 
controversy ! What a providence for us was that sudden 
seizing of all forts and arsenals and public property, in 
the incredible violence of mad earnestness, when a calm 
and pretentious scheme of counsel would probably have 
betrayed our giant power in its sleep. 



TYNG. 73 

How graciously God lias all the time stimulated pur- 
pose, and elevated faith, and new-created hope, by the 
mere mortification of defeats ! How mercifully he has 
trained us up to the national idea, that we are a people, 
that we are one people, by scattering the blood of New- 
England and the West, of the Middle and the South, of 
the hill-tops and the shore, in one common sprinkling, 
through the whole field of warfare ; burying the dead of 
the whole land side by side, in far distant but fraternal 
and equal cemeteries ; giving a title to every State, in 
every soil, in this precious planting of their strength and 
glory ; until at length we have come to rejoice in being 
one people, under one ruler, — and in the one title, 
American, we know no North, no South, no East, no 
West ! How remarkable is that providence which has 
given us a new currency, negotiable throughout the con- 
tinent, founded upon the aggregate of the property of the 
nation, and cherished and made certain by the very pride 
of the people ; making that which is proverbially, in 
social economy, the weakness of a nation, the very strength 
of ours ! 

What a providence was that which settled the question 
of our iron-clads on the sea ! " Man had not designed or 
intended it. Our authorities did not suspect the coming, 
if they were aware even of the character of the Merrimac, 
when she bore down upon our wooden fleet in the harbor of 
Norfolk. No preparation had been made sufficient to meet 
her. The Monitor, the only vessel in our whole navy that 
was able to cope successfully with her terrible armament and 
iron-plated sides, was considered of so little importance, that 
when she steamed out of the port of New-York, on her trial 



74 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

trip, few were aware of her departure. She was not sent 
to engage her powerful foe. On the contrary, while upon 
her passage south, an order from the Navy Department 
was sent to call her back. But God interposed. The 
order was not permitted to be delivered. Winds and 
storm were made the executors of his will. Her voyage 
was retarded sufficiently to permit her antagonist to come 
forth and display her character and power, but not suffi- 
ciently to prevent her coming in time to save and defend 
the nation's property and the nation's honor. At the very 
moment when really needed, when most desired, and all 
was apparently lost, she came to the rescue and secured a 
glorious victory. It was a victory given of God." It 
secured the succession of similar victories and the peren- 
nial monuments of the skill and courage of American 
naval warfare. 

All these are lines of providence, — exalted, hidden, be- 
yond our conception or arrangement. We might multiply 
them almost indefinitely, for they cover the whole field of 
observation. Every step which these Southern rebels have 
taken, they have been fighting against a providence that 
has been resistless, and have been compelled to defeat 
themselves. They have fought for slavery as a divine in- 
stitution, until they were compelled absurdly to promise 
liberty to their slaves, if they would enlist and fight for 
slavery with them. Emancipation was made the boon for 
the black equally by the North and the South. They had 
vast crops of cotton, which they laid up for Northern 
armies to seize. They issued an unlimited order to plant 
only for food, to cover their territory with corn, and thus 
prepared the way for the support of Northern troops, in 



TYNG. 75 

their glorious march through the whole length of the re- 
belling territory. 

They have lain in constrained idleness around Rich- 
mond, until the gathering hosts from abroad were too 
manifestly encircling them to permit a longer quiet. And 
then Richmond must be evacuated, and their whole 
armies, driven from their burrow, be made to surrender in 
the field. These are wonderful providences of God. 

Perhaps the last act of providence is the most remark- 
able of all. They have combined for the murder of the 
President and his cabinet, in the hope of creating an un- 
expected anarchy of a nation without a ruler, and of in- 
volving the nation, in the suddenness of its despair, in an 
inextricable and hopeless revolution. But how God has 
confounded the counsel of Ahithophel ! Satan was not 
more deceived when he plunged the Jewish mob into the 
murder of their Lord, than when, on this very commemo- 
ration day of his crucifixion, he has aimed a traitor's bul- 
let against the exalted ruler of this people. It .is a costly 
sacrifice, indeed, to us, but the blessings which it will pur- 
chase may be well worth the price. It has demonstrated 
the spirit and fruit of this rebellion. It has made it ab- 
horrent and hateful in the eyes of the whole nation. It 
has cut up all partial, trifling dealing with it by the roots. 
It has introduced a ruler whose stern experience of South- 
ern wickedness will cut off all pleas of leniency to the base 
destroyers of their country. It has cemented for ever the 
national union and spirit of this people, by making the 
man whom they most loved and honored the last great 
sacrifice for the liberty and order of the people. And just 
as the murder of Charles the First has been the one grand 



76 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

support of the English throne for two centuries, has made 
rebellion inconceivably hateful to the loyal mind, and 
warned off generations of Englishmen from all approaches 
to rebellion, so will the murder of Mr. Lincoln sanctify 
the right and power of Government, and make rebellion 
for ever hateful to the American nation. 

If there be this day a single fact which especially 
strengthens the royal house and government of England, 
it is the unrighteous murder of the first Charles. The 
severed head of a Stuart is the foundation stone beneath 
the throne of Britain and Victoria. And if there be one 
fact of providence which hereafter will especially conse- 
crate the right of national authority, and overwhelm the 
first suggestion of secession or treason, it will be this mur- 
der of the man whom all history will acknowledge the 
wisest, purest, greatest, best of American rulers ; if not 
the Father of his country, at least the loved brother of all 
his people, and the friend and defender of the poorest and 
lowest of all its generations. Thus has providence tri- 
umphed over our enemies and given us the victory. 

III. The victory is the gift of God. This is so clear in 
fact, and so clearly a consequence of the series of facts 
which we have already considered, that I need not illus- 
trate it in minute detail. The time is too recent for our 
forgetfulness of any of the great distinguishing facts which 
have marked this warfare, or to permit us to arrogate the 
honor to our own skill and power alone. It is impossible 
to forget the gloomy aspect of the first years of this strug- 
gle — when at the East we were for a time severed from 
all communication with the national capital, — and in the 
West, all the states watered by the Mississippi up to the 



TYNG. 77 

Ohio, and higher on the western side, were held and forti- 
fied by the rebellion. It is impossible to forget the sad- 
ness of defeat after defeat in Virginia ; the inaction and 
unwillingness, on the part of some of our leaders, to act 
in positive aggression against this Southern power, so con- 
spicuously exalted, so defiant, so boastful, so encouraged 
from abroad ; the threatening aspect of the Border States, 
as they were called ; the bold threats of the leaders of the 
rebellion, of the devastation and ruin they were to bring 
upon this Northern land. 

It is impossible to undervalue the courage, the union, 
the determination, the spirit with which these Southern 
rebels were inspired and sustained in their infuriated pur- 
pose. It is impossible to forget the devout humbleness of 
spirit with which our beloved and exalted President called 
the thoughts and dependence of the people, like some 
ancient ruler in the Theocracy, back to God. And when 
in the opening of the second year General Grant com- 
menced his victorious career in the West, — and Donelson, 
and Pittsburgh Landing, and Yicksburgh, were rapid 
fruits of his valor, wisdom, and fidelity ; and Dupont 
made his great opening on the coast of South Carolina; 
and Burnside effected his permanent lodgment on the in- 
land shore of North Carolina; and the noble Farragut 
opened the Mississippi to New Orleans, meeting in his up- 
ward ascent the fleets which came down from the waters 
above: and Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, and Maryland, 
were all recovered to a permanent Union ; and Antietam 
and Gettysburgh were the remarkable tokens of divine 
protection within the limits of our own eastern soil ; it was 
impossible not to discern the hand of God, giving victory 



78 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

from the very hour that the war was acknowledged to be 
a war for liberty as well as order, — and for the deliverance 
of the oppressed, as truly as for the conserving of the pros- 
perous and peaceful. 

Accordingly, again and again did our exalted and be- 
lieving President issue his proclamations of thanksgiving, 
sounding the appeal in the ears of the whole nation, — Oh ! 
give thanks unto the Lord, who maketh us to triumph 
over our enemies. But later victories are even more re- 
markable. The rapid campaign of Sherman, and the 
quiet imperturbable wisdom, faith, and purpose of General 
Grant, in the combination of all his varied concentrating 
forces, — in his calm endurance, — in his modest self-abne- 
gation, in his fidelity to duty, and success in duty, have 
no parallel in the greatness of character which they sever- 
ally manifest, in human history. All these displays, 
though grand in themselves, are but a part of the one 
wonderful divine scheme. All talent, calculation, courage, 
and force opposed to them, seem to have been paralyzed 
and made useless. And as I survey the whole scene, thus 
rapidly noted, I should hold myself an infidel in spirit, 
not to say, It is God alone who giveth us the victory. 

But I deem all these displays inferior and secondary. 
The moral greatness of the President, — his meekness, — 
his faith, — his gentleness, — his patience, — his self-posses- 
sion, — his love of the people, — his confidence in the 
people, — his higher confidence in God, — his generous 
temper never provoked, — his love fearing no evil, pro- 
voking no evil, — are such an elevation of human character, 
such an appropriate supply for our very want, that I can- 
not but adore the power of that God, whose inspiration 



TYNG. 79 

giveth man wisdom, as the one author of this gift, bringing 
an unknown, a reproached, a despised man, to reveal a 
greatness of ability, and a dignity of appropriation, which 
surrounding men had not suspected, which shone too 
purely and too beautifully to be envied or hated by any, — 
and which have at last commanded universal confidence 
and homage from those who had never united to sustain 
him. 

Yet the divine interposition does not leave the field even 
here. The creation of the wonderful spirit f nd reach of 
human beneficence and ministration, which we have seen 
in the midst of this war, and by this war, and for this war, 
throughout our country, is even a higher demonstration 
of the divine presence and power. The calling forth of the 
Sanitary and Christian Commissions, like the father and 
mother of the household, in their separate relationships 
and responsibility — the one striving for material provision, 
the other ministering the words and acts of kindness and 
love to those made the objects of their protection ; the 
creating of the Freedmen's Commission, to search and 
care for the poor outcasts, for whom nothing was pro- 
vided, — the prompting of the Union Commission, to min- 
ister to the wants of those whom rebellion had stripped, 
and rendered homeless and destitute, for whom no other 
protection seemed prepared, — the starting forth of Homes 
for Disabled Soldiers, and the orphans of soldiers, and the 
millions of dollars given by a people heavily taxed and 
burdened by all the cost of defending their liberty and 
their nation, for the grand and glorious purpose of minister- 
ing increased comfort to their varied objects of spon- 
taneous consideration and sympathy, — displaying a love, 



80 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

and tenderness, and purpose, which have grown brighter 
in the midst of the very sorrows which have filled every 
house and heart, — have been such a divine display of 
God's interposition, as nothing on earth beside has 
equaled. 

How strangely contrasted has all this divine teaching and 
guidance appeared with the recklessness of life and comfort 
which have marked the history of the agents of this rebel- 
lion 1 How most highly contrasted in the different relations 
adopted toward the prisoners of war ! No cruelty to our 
prisoners in Southern hands could move our Government 
to a bitter retaliation. Even though sometimes an occa- 
sional excitement of acerbity among the people, excessively 
provoked by the tales of suffering which they heard, has 
demanded some retaliation, the President could never be 
brought to be the agent of revenge or cruelty ; and the 
general sentiment of this people would never have con- 
sented to it as a principle of national rule. That God, 
who has given them the victory in the line of their fidelity 
to himself, would have vindicated his own honor in their 
humiliation if they had laid such unhallowed hands upon 
the ark of God. And now all this survey is of a finished 
work. God hath given us the victery. And there re- 
mains as the one absorbing thought that which is our 
fourth point, — 

IV. The resulting treatment of the captives in the 
Lord's example : " My father, shall I smite them ? Shall 
I smite them ?" " Thou shalt not smite them. Wouldst 
thou smite those whom thou hast taken captive with thy 
sword, and with thy bow? Set bread and water before 
them, that they may eat and drink, and let them go/' 



TYNG. 81 

The carrying out of this resuscitating plan seemed emi- 
nently adapted to the mind and heart of President Lincoln. 
But too great personal honor and influence it is not the 
will of God to entrust to individual men. When Moses 
came to the entrance upon the Land of Promise, he was 
permitted, by faith enlightened, to see something of its 
glory. But he was not personally to minister in its settle- 
ment or distribution. He beheld the glowing future 
spread before his people, and laid down in the land of Moab 
to die. 

So our beloved leader has been allowed to live until, as 
from Pisgah's height, he could contemplate the fast ap- 
proaching future for his nation. He saw the enemy sub- 
dued, their strongholds taken, their army scattered every 
man to his home, and the sure prospect of union, liberty, 
and peace before the nation. The one remaining question 
was, What shall be done with those whom God has thus 
subdued ? The generosity of his spirit and wish, his read- 
iness to give the utmost possible latitude to mercy in the 
arrangement of their return to national duty and penitent 
loyalty, were perfectly understood and known. All this 
future he was calmly, kindly considering, when his life 
was taken from him by the hand of violence. We shall 
not withhold our lament that death found him in the sanc- 
tioning by his presence of the demoralizing influence of 
the theatre, unwillingly as he evidently went there. That 
he should have been slain in a Moab like this, can never 
be anything but a sorrow to every serious mind. The full 
purpose of that providence we do not yet read. This 
death, like the burning of the Richmond theatre, many 
years since, may awaken a feeling of increased horroi and 



82 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

aversion to the seductive influence of the theatre through- 
out our religious community, and may thus be a blessing 
in the divine providence to arise from this sad incident in 
his departure. 

But he has gone before the settlement, and without the 
settlement of this great problem of the coming influence 
and relation of his administration. That his death will 
change in some degree the character and measure of that 
influence cannot be doubted. That a restriction si i all 
come as the consequence of his death upon the freeness of 
the action of mercy to the conquered is most natural and 
just. Human law knows no crime greater in its malig- 
nity, or in its effects, than the murder of the ruler of a 
nation, the final, heaviest guilt of treason against its 
authority. That others, whose influence and example 
have nourished this spirit, whose words and avowals have 
often before encouraged and incited it, shall be held respon- 
sible for it, is inevitable and just. And our Government 
owe it to the majesty of the nation, and to the authority 
of God, which they represent, not to allow such an abhor- 
rent violation of human authority and safety to pass with- 
out a very clear and distinct retribution upon the guilty 
inciters and accessories in such a crime. 

Still, let not a spirit of individual vengeance be allowed 
to rear the monument to our fallen head. Let not passion 
seize the reins of guidance in an hour so momentous. Let 
the widest possible door be oj^ened for the exercise of kind- 
ness, and the utterance of welcome to those who honestly 
desire to return to their loyalty and duty to the nation 
which they have outraged, and the Government which 
they have insulted and despised. The intelligent leaders 



TYNG. 83 

in this rebellion deserve no pitj from any human being. 
Let them go. Some other land must be their home. Their 
own attained relations and results will be punishment and 
sorrow enough in time to come. Their property is justly 
forfeited to the nation which they have attempted to 
destroy, and to the oppressed, over whom they have tyran- 
nized and triumphed. If the just utterance of law con- 
demns them personally to suffer as traitors, let no life be 
taken in the spirit of vengeance. Let the world see one 
instance of a Government that is great enough to ask no 
revenge, and self-confident and self-sustaining enough to 
need no retributive violence to maintain the majesty of its 
authority. Let the Lord's own example be, to the utmost 
extent of personal relations, our rule and purpose, deter- 
mined in the spirit of union and patience and kindness, to 
edify and restore, in the widest possible application of the 
spirit, consistent with the nation's safety and the honor of 
the laws, — the multitudes who have been swept down the 
current of rebellion, by the dominant influence and ex- 
ample of those whom they have been taught to regard as 
their leaders in the path of public duty. 

There may be great difficulties in the details of the re- 
suscitation of our afflicted land. But there can be none 
which such a spirit and purpose as were displayed in Pres- 
ident Lincoln would not soon overcome and remove. And 
upon nothing will memory more delight to dwell than 
upon that high forgiving temper which lifts up a fallen 
foe, restores a wandering brother, and repays the cruelty 
of hatred by an overcoming benignity and love. Little 
was he known in character and tendency by those who 
met his first administration with violent threats, and re- 



84 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

proachful libels. And little has the real spirit of this 
Northern people been known by the great body of the 
South, who really know but little upon any subject, but 
as their accredited superiors have been accustomed to 
teach them. They have heard from their highest rebel 
officers nothing but terms of low and ribaldrous reproach 
and scorn applied to us. They have called us hyenas, and 
satisfied their hatred by the freedom of unlimited abuse. 
But in reality there has never been a time when this whole 
Northern people have not been ready to meet the first 
offer of conciliation with the most cordial response of 
kindness. Let that spirit now prevail. Open the arms 
of fraternal concord. Spread through all the land the 
priceless blessings of liberty and education to all the peo- 
ple. Give the full rights of respected and acknowledged 
citizenship to all. Blot out, cover up thje last remnant of 
that slavery which has been the parent and the child of 
every species of oppression — the one line of division be- 
tween a free North and a beggared South — and plant 
around the grave that holds the monument and the me- 
mory of our beloved President a mingled grove of the 
pine-tree and the palm, the orange and the apple, to flour- 
ish in immortal union, and to rival each other only in the 
beauty of their growth, the abundance of their fruit, and 
the perennial verdure of their living foliage, that God may 
be glorified in all and by all for ever. 



SERMON V. 



REV CHARLES S. ROBINSON. 



He was a good man, and a just. — Luke xxiii. 50. 

One other Sabbath like this I remember, and only one ; 
that of which this is the exact anniversary, four years ago. 
What humiliated the nation then is now measurably rec- 
tified. The ensign of our country floats once more on 
the ramparts from which it had just been torn by the 
fierce hand of treason. The same batteries that hurled 
shot and shell at the fortress, whose name has become 
historic, have been forced to pour forth their empty salutes 
in honor of the restoration. And the proclamation is 
already in the air, which was to summon a grateful 
Republic to a thanksgiving for the manifold mercy of 
Almighty God. 

Right in the midst of our rejoicing we are dashed into 
sorrow deeper than ever. To-day it is not the humbling 
of pur pride that makes us mourn, but the wounding of 
our hearts in their keenest sensibilities. For he who has 
been our leader lies low in his coffin ; foul murder has 
been clone at the capital ; andtf ^lation stands hushed in 
the presence of its unburied^j W 

Have the old days of barbarism returned u^Hn us ? Is 



86 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

assassination become civilized ? Has the bullet of a mur- 
derer recognition as a belligerent right ? In what age do 
we live ? Is justice dead ? Where are we ? How hap- 
pens it that the wires quiver with tidings of deeds worthy 
only of the darkest years of Yenetian conspiracy and 
shame ? 

I said, we have got the flag back again on Sumter. So 
we have. But only at half-mast. It reached the staff 
just in time to droop. Men began to cheer — suddenly 
they turned to wailing. The triumph seems a mockery. 
Victory waits recognition unheeded, for the bells are 
tolling. He who made our success welcome is not here to 
share it. Abraham Lincoln, the honored and beloved 
head of the nation, is no more ! 

My brethren, bear me record here to-day. This pulpit 
has never uttered one timid, troubled word in these four 
years. I have not lost heart for a moment in the essential 
righteousness of our cause, nor confidence in the final 
success that would come to it. You will misunderstand 
my language now, and mistake my temper," if you imagine 
I am cowed into any wavering, startled into any irresolu- 
tion, or grieved into any distrust, by the terrible events of 
the hour. But I shall not attempt to conceal from you 
that I am shocked more than ever before, and under the 
cloud of God's providence as I never expected to be. I do 
not know the meaning of this awful transaction. I could 
almost wish it was the custom to wear sackcloth, and put 
ashes on mourners' heads. All the day would I fittingly 
sit silent under the shj^M|uf a common grief with you. 
I speak truly when I n . wave met no greater sorrow in 
my manljKife than this. ~""I behave myself as though he 



ROBIXSON. 87 

had been my friend or brother ; I bow down heavily, as 
one that monrneth for his mother." And all this sensibil- 
ity I know von are sharing with me. 

The feeling which rests on each mind and heart to-day 
is not a simple feeling. To us all it is, in some measure, 
undefined. I cannot be of any real help to you, I fear, 
save in the way of giving you an analysis of your grief, 
and suggesting the form of its expression. 

I. — Let me say, then, that in this complex mourning of 
heart, is found, first of all, our admiration of that great 
man's character, whose sudden death has saddened the 
entire nation. Surely, you will not need that I enter into 
argument to prove that these words of the text that I have 
chosen, applied to the counselor from Arimathea in the 
inspired record, are most fitting when applied to our late 
Chief Magistrate. 

He was " a good man." Called by the great voice of 
the American people to leave his rural home, and assume 
the highest honors it could confer, his parting request to 
his old friends and neighbors was only for their continuous 
prayers. With the sincerest humility, he accepted his 
place as the minister of the nation, and the servant of God. 
He had no higher ambition than to know his duty and 
perform it. He felt himself swept out into the current of 
a purpose, as majestic in grandeur as it was celestial in 
origin ; the sublime purpose of Him to whom nations be- 
long, to care for this western Republic in the hour of its 
manifest peril. From that day to this, he has never 
swerved from the line of his integrity. jSo man has ever 
been maligned as he has ; no man has ever outlived abuse 
as he has. "When the nation shall have laid his remains 



88 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

in the burial yard of the village where he lived, there 
will never be heard a hiss by his tombstone, there will be no 
trail of any serpent across his grave. Even now we have 
hardly ceased to hear the dignified tones of his voice, 
wonderfully pathetic, almost prophetic, as he told us, in 
the second inaugural address, of the simplicity of his faith, 
the humility of his estimate of himself, and his profound 
reliance upon the infinite God. 

He was a "just" man. Through all these years it has 
been touching to notice how implicitly the true-hearted 
believed Abraham Lincoln to be true. The mean hirelings 
of place, and the mere parasites of office, kept out of his 
way. The demagogues and partisans grew passionate 
over his perversity to their principles, and called him an 
impracticable leader, because of his steadfast loyalty to 
truth and fairness as between man and man. When one 
received injustice, and could not, in the confusion of the 
times, make his righteousness appear, how instinctively 
he thought of the President, and knew, if he could only 
have a hearing from him, all would be well. When mili- 
tary commanders failed, and popular clamor was raised 
under the dangerous disappointment, calmly and gen- 
erously the good man waited until they should make 
another trial. He stood true to those who were seeking 
to undermine his power, with a magnanimity sublime. Oh, 
the patience of that great, kind heart, in the days when it 
cost something to be considerate ! And now, after the 
smoke has cleared away from two political battle-fields, 
fought more savagely than any other such in our history, 
there comes to view no one act of his at which a citizen 
will blush. His sun went down while to us it yet seemed 



ROBINSON. 89 

day ; but at the evening time it was light. He died at the 
height of his fame. All rancor of party has disappeared. 
The clouds that dimmed his noon gather now, at the twi- 
light, to glow* in his praise. 

So much, then, is true ; " he was a good man, and a 
just." But there is a question, which our intelligent 
Bible-reading people are wont to ask, when any one of 
their great men dies — was he a Christian man % There is 
no reason why we should turn away, unanswered, an 
inquiry like this. It is not an impertinent and obtrusive 
investigation of his interior life. He made no mystery of 
his faith. His own tale of his religious experience is 
something like this — coining in more than one way, and 
attested with more than one witness : 

" When I left Springfield, I felt my utter dependence 
upon God. The responsibility weighed heavily upon my 
heart. I knew I should fail without a divine help. But 
I was not then a Christian. When my child died, I felt 
that I needed the comfort of the Gospel. It was the 
severest affliction that ever fell upon me. Then I wanted 
to be a Christian. But never did I feel that I reached 
the point, till I wandered one day, alone, among the graves 
of the boys that fell at Gettysburg. There, when I read 
the inscriptions, so full of hope and faith, I began to think 
I loved and trusted Jesus as my Saviour." 

Thus, our image of this humble, noble man, rises on 
our vision complete. Gifted with great intellectual power; 
proverbial for his rectitude ; bearing " honest " for his 
title as Aristides bore " just " for his ; affectionate, with 
all the instincts of common humanity, even to the lowest ; 



90 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

fearless and brave; he added tile crowning grace to Lis 
memory with his unaffected piety as a Christian, 

II. — For all this the nation mourns his loss. But I am 
not mistaken in believing there is an element in our sor- 
row here to-day, far more subtle and experimental than 
mere admiration of his spotless character. There is, in 
the second place, a feeling of personal bereavement. 
Singularly identified with us all has this man come to be. 
Test your heart now. Tell me, of all the leaders in civil 
life, of all the commanders in the field, who has the hold 
upon your manly affections that this great-hearted man of 
the people had ? Your ideal of him was like that of a 
relative — one of your household. Never, till the hand of 
an assassin struck him, did you know how dear he was. 
I see, in all this, that which makes me happy and hopeful ; 
here is a token of the infinite capacities of tenderness in 
the spirit of the American people. 

I think, to-day, as the fearful news is flashed across the 
land, of the families that live in the valleys, and among 
the hills, and over the prairies, to some member of which 
he has been kind, and so has endeared himself to all. 
How they will weep as for a brother beloved ! Village 
bells are knelling all over the continent. A great hand 
waved darkly across the landscape, and swooped the 
banners down from exultation into grief. Oh, we have 
never known how many letters his own pen has written to 
bereaved wives and mourning mothers ! When news of 
a terrible death in many an inconspicuous household was 
to be communicated, the President of the United States 
took time, from his few hours of privacy, to send an epistle, 
so generous, so full of grateful sympathy, so gentle and 



ROBINSON. 91 

appreciative, that tlie wounded hearts felt soothed, and 
bore the bereavement without breaking. He knew how 
to say kind things so well, and loved to say them ! 

I think of the soldiers, also, whose interests he watched 
like a jealous parent. In these trying times of partisan- 
ship and confusion there was always a likelihood of haste, 
and consequent injustice, in the administration of military 
tribunals. Many a man, innocent of alleged inadvertence 
or crime, was unable to show it, and so was in peril of 
shame or death. Patiently that busy President studied 
out complicated accounts ; bent all his legal ability to the 
investigation of contradictory testimony ; read the ' long, 
tedious documents on either side ; simply determined that 
every man should get his due ; and then, beyond that, as 
much leniency as was safe to give him. How the soldiers 
loved him ! They are telling to each other, this very day, 
stories of his kindness to them. Only last week he spent 
the day that remained to him in Richmond, going through 
the wards of the hospitals, saluting, with his warm-hearted 
grasp, each wounded hero in turn ; and, when they had 
no hands to offer, he laid his big palm on their foreheads, 
and thanked them in the name of the country ! 

I think, more than all, of the poor freedmen, when they 
hear of the President's death. How they will wonder and 
will wail ! They called him " Father," as if it were part of 
his name. Oh, they believed in Abraham Lincoln ! They 
expected him, as the Israelites did Moses. Some, no doubt, 
imagined he was a deity. They were unsophisticated and 
ignorant, and that good, kind man seemed so like a being 
from heaven. They said he would come. They prayed he 
would come. They waited for him to come. And then he 



92 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

came ! When those untutored sons of slavery saw him 
in the streets of the rebel capital, after its capture, they 
fairly blasphemed, without being aware of it. He seemed 
to them and their children a second Messiah. He never 
broke a promise to their hope. When they were certain 
he had uttered one word, they rested on it, as they would 
on God's. He stood by the poor creatures his hand had 
freed, under all obloquy and suspicion. He put his signa- 
ture to a parchment that made them men and women 
with souls and bodies. Then the enfranchised millions 
opened their very souls to him, as if out under the sun- 
shine. His name was a spell to quiet or to rouse them. 
What will they do, now he is dead ! Alas ! alas ! for the 
weeping and the wonder they will have, when they know 
how he died ! 

Thus, we all weep together. Christian resignation 
oilers its high consolations, and we have no spirit of 
murmuring or complaint. Yet none of us will deny that 
this is the severest blow, which, as a great people, we 
have ever received. The nation has, twice before, lost its 
Chief Magistrate by death ; but there has been no mourn- 
ing like this to-day. 

III. — A third element in our grief, under this afflictive 
dispensation of Providence, is the fear of impending 
calamity. It is impossible to free our minds of the deepest 
solicitude for the future. Alas ! we say, for the nation 
bereaved of its pilot, when out in the midst of such a sea 
as this ! Palinurus has been suddenly swept, by a wave, 
from the helm. 

I suppose this anxiety is natural; and yet, I am sure, it 
is needless. Difficult questions are coming up. Tlu* 



ROBINSON. 93 

practical wisdom of our recognized leader was cutting 
knots which men's perversity kept tying. We trusted 
him. We were knitting ourselves together in closer con- 
tidence in his decisions. That shrewd, native judgment, 
that clear-sighted penetration, that incorruptible integrity 
— oh, how we used to throw ourselves back upon qualities 
like these, and feel secure ! We found fault with him 
more than once ; but, eventually, he was justified in his 
course. We said he was slow ; but he went as fast as 
God did. He reasoned with logic that events taught him. 
We were inordinately cast down under defeat ; he kept 
us cheerful. We grew boisterous under victory ; he was 
calm himself, but glad to have us so happy. He was 
never disheartened, never unduly elated. When he failed, 
he became humbler; when he succeeded, he thanked God. 
When the way was open, he was as alert as anybody; 
when the way was hedged up, he was strong enough to sit 
still. By and by we learned to know him well and rest 
in him sublimely. Meantime he urged us to look beyond 
him. He made us devout. Put a man on the busiest 
street-corner, and let him keep looking upward, and he 
will gather a crowd that will all be looking upward, So 
our President gave unaffected praise to God, until we all 
began to sing with him. Spectacles like these, which 
have been witnessed daily, have never been known in this 
land before ; Mammon has learned the doxologies belong- 
ing to God. 

When such a leader is taken suddenly away, there is 
nothing unphilosophical in the feeling of utter dismay and 
apprehension that men are apt to experience. But, in our 
case, all this is needless. My brethren, I commend to 



94 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

your calm consideration, one solemn thought, concerning 
the lessons of all history. Men are nothing but instru- 
ments in the hands of their Maker, in working out his 
purposes. Just as a sculptor needs now a chisel, now a 
file, now a graver, and never thinks he must apologize or 
explain to us, who stand by to watch him, why he drops 
one tool or takes up another; for he is making a statue, 
which he intends for a worthy immortality, — so the all- 
wise God, carrying out his vast plans, assumes one man 
and lays aside another, and never answers any of our curi- 
ous questions, while his " eternal Thought moves on his 
undisturbed affairs." We are to blame seriously, if we 
allow ourselves to be depressed with forebodings. God's 
rule, in all this four years' war, has been, to bring to 
naught the things that are, not by the things that are, but 
by the things that are not. We have lived under the un- 
varying discipline of surprise. By this time we ought to 
have learned our lesson. 

With courage undiminished, therefore, let us believe 
that God w T ill fit this coming man for the duties of his un- 
expected office. Be on the alert now for the discovery of 
some new purpose. The infinite plans of the Almighty 
are shifting their phase for some disclosure that will re- 
lieve our embarrassment. It is expedient that even such 
offences as these should come. There can be no doubt 
that God means to make good out of this evil. And the 
question is this: Will you and I be quiet in all the pain 
of our bereavement, if we are only sure that the event 
will be overruled to the benefit of the cause, the race, the 
nation ? Will we accept the counsel of Caiaphas as pos- 
sibly adapted to our crisis: "Ye know nothing at all; 



ROBINSON. 95 

nor consider that it is expedient that one man should die 
for the people, and that the whole nation perish not '?" 
Perhaps, in this very alarm for the future, there will be 
found a healthier spirit for us all. 

IV. — For, in the fourth place, I remark, we find, as an 
element in our mourning to-day, a deep-seated indignation 
at the horrible crime which has been committed. Hu- 
manity sickens and shudders at the diabolical ingenuity, 
the malignant hatred, of this culminating act of the rebel- 
lion. If there ever was a time in which to obey the com- 
mand, " Be ye angry, and sin not," that time has come 
now. "There was no such deed done nor seen from the 
day that the children of Israel came up out of the land of 
Egypt unto this clay ; consider of it, take advice, and 
speak your minds." 

Let a vast public sentiment be aroused and organized, 
that shall exhibit this vile wickedness in its true light. 
Let us invoke Christendom to make it an eternal hissing. 
With a recoil of feeling so violent that it wearies my will, 
and shocks my very being, with uttermost loathing for an 
offence so abominable ; seeing in it that keen, fine relish 
of depravity that marks it not only as devilish, but one of 
the master-works of the prince of devils, I stand simply 
appalled — wondering, with unspeakable wonder, how it 
can be accepted by any creature wearing the form of 
civilized humanity! It is an outrage on the community, 
whose tolerance it defies. It is an insult to decency, a 
rebuke to forbearance, an offence unto God. It is without 
the power of language to reach the condemnation it merits. 
The words of denunciation die on my lips in their own 
feebleness. It is with an affecting sense of gratitude to 



96 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

God that I discover the positive poverty of my mother- 
tongue in epithets of vileness befitting its description. As 
much as in you is, live peaceably with all men ; but there 
ought to be a voice of opinion so stern, so outspoken, that 
no man of credited decency should stand tamely by and 
hear a crime, so unparalleled in its baseness, even extenu- 
ated. 

Is the world going back into savagery? Is this Chris- 
tian land to become the rival of Dahomey? This is no 
isolated act. The history of this slaveholders' rebellion is 
full of such. Again and again have the lives of our chief 
men been threatened with the dirk, the bullet, and the 
knife. Poison has been put in their food. Their homes 
have been entered by spies. Their steps have been way- 
laid in the streets. And our common people have fared 
no better. Quiet villages have been invaded, and women 
and children shot down with fiendish glee. Cars, crowded 
with unsuspicious travelers, have been thrown from the 
track. Public buildings have been fired over a whole city 
at once. And all this under the shadow of authority 
claimed through a paper commission. Yet the nation has 
kept its temper. The spectacle of a great people, thus 
outraged beyond a parallel, yet so patient and forbearing, 
has been sublime enough to make our enemies wonder. 
They have called our magnanimity meanness, and com- 
plimented us upon our manifold spaniel-like virtues, with 
sarcasm that burnt in upon manly sensibility like fire. 

This assassination is the earliest reply which chivalry 
has had to make to forbearance unmeasured and friendli- 
ness almost fraternal. Now, let us have done with it ! 
Talk to me no more of " our misguided brethren." Some 



ROBINSON. 97 

are misguided — and it is those who misguide them I 
denounce. Cain was brother to Abel. Relationship is a 
perilous thing when it says, " Art thou in health, my 
brother," and then stabs under the fifth rib. Talk to me 
no more of the "same race, educated at the same colleges, 
born of the same blood." Satan was of the same race as 
Gabriel, and educated at the same celestial school of love 
and grace ; but one became a rebel, and between them 
ever thereafter was " a great gull' fixed." He cannot be 
brother of mine, he belongs to no race of mine, who, in the 
foul cause of human bondage, fights with a rural massacre, 
makes war with midnight arson, and crowns his unmanly 
barbarity with stabbing a sick man in his bed, and 
shooting an unarmed husband in the very sight of his 
wife. 

Let no one deem this violence unnecessary. They tell 
us that none of our utterances are lost ; the vibrations of 
the air on which they fall perpetuate them into an eternity 
of circles, spreading wider and wider. If I am ever again 
to meet these denunciations of mine, conscientiously 
spoken in this Christian pulpit, let me find them in 
company with a declaration that will explain them. 
There are, in this community, to-day, men and ivomen — 
God forgive them ! — nurtured under the hot debasements 
and vile luxuries of the slave system, sojourning here on 
our charitable sufferance, in order meanly to escape the 
perils of the ruinous war they have helped to incite, who 
clap their hands in applause of this murder ! I think, in 
serious self-defence, we are to see that this thing is ended. 
This wickedness clamors for retributive judgment, and 
invokes the wrath of God. 

5 



98 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

V. — Thus I am led, naturally, to speak of a fifth element 
in our feeling of mourning to-day ; the profound conviction 
of necessity that the law of the land should now take its 
course in relation to all the aiders and abettors of this 
infamous rebellion. There was, perhaps, needed one more 
proof of the unutterable sin of treason. Here has it been 
flashed out upon us, like the final stroke of a departing 
thunder-storm, the least expected, but the most fearfully 
destructive of all that have fallen. We have been growing 
more and more loose in our estimates of guilt. We were 
catching from each other a spirit of sentimentalism that 
boded no good. Tired of war, longing for quiet, eager for 
trade, sickened with bloodshed, we were ready to say, let 
the criminals be pardoned, let the penalties of law be 
remitted. The next act in our national history was, in all 
likelihood, to be a general amnesty proclamation. Sud- 
denly, the hand which would have signed it was smitten 
down into death. Then our eyes were opened to the fixed, 
unalterable malignity in the temper of our foes. A great 
conspiracy is disclosed. Murder is done at the capital. 
Our beloved President becomes a victim to the very 
magnanimity he was inculcating. Warned fully of the 
peril, he would not believe human nature could be so base. 
He trusted, and was betrayed. The entire government 
was menaced, in the moment of its open-hearted proffer of 
good will. 

We are satisfied that all this is perilous pusillanimity 
now. There is no fitness of generosity to malignants 
venomous as these. So, while our hearts are chilled, their 
affections hurried back on themselves in curdling horror, 
with pity ineffable, and sorrow that cannot be repressed, 



ROBINSON. 99 

we are united in saying, let the will of the law be done ! 
When there was a rebellion in heaven, the rebels were 
punished. God sent the fallen angels to hell. We are 
not to find fault with that kind of administration. Men 
can forgive. I do not believe there is one unkind senti- 
ment in any heart in the house of God this day. We 
draw a distinction, world-wide, between a crime and a 
criminal. The one we denounce, the other we pity. But 
the majesty of law must be vindicated. JSTo puritan had 
a right to be the defender of Guy Fawkes. No patriot 
had a right to screen Benedict Arnold from justice. Let 
there be now no violence. Let the common people be 
spared. But, on the track of the villains that have 
opened this insurrection, and urged it along its bloody 
track even to this dreadful consummation, let the footsteps 
of justice follow swiftly, relentlessly. 

It may, possibly, be said, by some, that this assassina- 
tion of the officers of government is a mere act of mad- 
ness, done by a brace of frantic fanatics ; and that it is 
not equitable and fair to hold a whole people responsible 
for its wickedness. 

Let it be said, in reply, that the tidings of this murder, 
going into the ranks of rebellion, will be hailed with a 
howl of gladness and satisfaction, equal to the yell in Pan- 
demonium, when Satan seduced Adam, and buried a race 
in ruin. It will never be disowned, save by a few of the 
most exposed leaders, who, seeing in it their own ruin, will 
repent, not like Peter, for sin, but like Judas, for the re- 
sults of sin. Even now, the instincts of every rebel sym- 
pathizer are on the alert to befriend the assassins, and 
block the way of justice. Furthermore, let it be said, that 



100 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

this crime happens to be conspicuous and heart-rending, 
because it has marked the nation's idol for its victim ; 
but it is only one of fifty thousand murders, actual, in- 
telligent, committed during the last two years by the 
parties in power through the revolted States. And 
these murders in the prisons are, every one of them, just 
so much the more diabolical, as starvation slowly is more 
horrible than the quicker death of the bullet. The spirit 
is the same in all cases. This wickedness is the legitimate 
outgrowth of that system of slavery which originated the 
rebellion, and debauched, from time immemorial, all the 
finer instincts of man. 

Hence, there is no revenge in the popular heart to-day, 
but only retribution. We pity the malefactors ; we pray 
for them ; but in this determination we are fixed — let the 
majesty of the law be vindicated upon them as traitors ; 
let justice pursue them, one by one ; let the gates of the 
world be closed to their search for asylum ; let judgment 
follow on as implacable as doom. 

YI. — I might well pause here, in the enumeration of 
elements in the feelino; we are all cherishino* under the 
pressure of this heart-rending sorrow. But there is one 
more, which I detect in my own heart, and know is in the 
hearts of my hearers. We desire to know what instruc- 
tion the all-wise God has intended us to receive. We 
we would inquire for His counsels, and humbly learn of 
Him. My office, as a Christian minister, will be dis- 
charged this morning, when I have sought to point out to 
you some few of the lessons forced into vivid illumination 
by this terrible dispensation of Providence. 

1. First of all, then, let us learn here how history is 



ROBINSON. 101 

composed. I am certain we have no proper conception 
of the magnitude of an event like this. "We are too near 
it to discover its proportions. Travelers tell ns they are 
always disappointed with the earliest glimpse of vast 
mountains. Standing close under the shadow of awful 
forms, so peerless in majesty, they have no adequate no- 
tions of their loftiness and amazing mass. These need 
distance on the landscape to be truly appreciated. So an 
event like this is never really reverenced as it should be. 
It needs time for the free play of the imagination. We 
are all unconscious of the spectacle we are to present to 
posterity. 

The dreadful deed, which has filled our minds with hor- 
ror, will be a growing vision of weird wickedness, shining 
with a strange luriclness of its own, as one of the wildest 
tragedies of the world's most unwelcome remembrance. 
It ranks with the suicide of Cleopatra, the death of Csesar, 
the murder of William the Silent, the conspiracy of Cati- 
line, the gunpowder plot of Guy Fawkes, the imperial 
incidents in the wide empire of crime. To us the event 
seems simply personal ; our views of it are necessarily 
narrow. Our leader has fallen. Our Government has 
been menaced. But we only speculate upon its immedi- 
ate results. The criminals will soon be apprehended. The 
insurrection will end, and all the excitement will subside. 
But when the mighty future shall receive the inheritance, 
it will be weighed by other balances, and estimated more 
truly. 

Thus history selects and perpetuates its own materials. 
Each thought, each word, each deed, each flash of senti- 
ment, each outbreak of passion, each exercise of influence, 



102 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

enters into the grand aggregate of human recollection and 
intelligence, which we call our Age. Out of this the pen 
of unerring history compiles its annals. 

"For Humanity sweeps onward; where to-day the martyr stands, 
On the morrow crouches Judas, with the silver in his hands ; 
Far in front the cross stands ready, and the crackling fagots burn, 
While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return 
To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn." 

2. In the second place, let us learn the essential iniquity 
and barbarism there is in any system of human oppres- 
sion. It was long ago remarked by Lamartine, that no 
man ever bound a chain around the neck of his fellow- 
man, without God's binding a chain of equal links around 
his own. Whoever debases the image of God will cer- 
tainly become debased. This thought receives an illus- 
tration here that amounts almost to a demonstration. 
This crime is the manifest outshoot of American slavery. 

I suppose no one remains now who doubts that all this 
aggregated mass of abomination, this summation of vil- 
lanies, whose tide of murky violence is rolling itself 
along before our weary eyes, had its fountain-head in the 
malignant ambition of a few men, who started the stream 
of revolution in order to waft themselves into continuous 
power. These miserable criminals, whom justice is pur- 
suing with eager scent, are but the merest minute-hands 
on the outermost dial of that popular sentiment which 
they represent. The spring that has set them in motion, 
the mechanism that gave them all their power, even the 
delicate balances that have timed their present success, 
are out of sight, yet easily discoverable in the dark intri- 



ROBINSON. 103 

cacies of that domestic and political life based on the 
humiliation of a feebler race. You may tear these index- 
pointers away, but the clock-work will run on. There 
will still remain the secret progress of debasement, on the 
bold face of which they have happened to become con- 
spicuous. You w T ill gain nothing till you tear the hideous 
system to pieces, and break the spring that lies coiled 
within it. 

"What is this crime ? Nothing new, surely ; only more 
public. It is one of a million crimes, each of which God 
has seen. The same reckless imperiousness of will, that 
has so many times struck at laws, has now struck at the 
Executive of law — that is all. The same thwarted passion, 
that has more than once shot a slave unpunished, now has 
shot a President — that is all. The same spirit is unsub- 
dued. It is ready to fly in the face of anything that stands 
in its way. To continue a system of social life that now 
has become a necessity in a measure, as a minister to lazi- 
ness and lust, these people have dismembered the church, 
divided the republic, fought their own brothers, and at last 
taken to murder and assassination. ISTo one can fail to 
see that there is one single line of connection running all 
through the history of this infamous rebellion. The pride 
of power, engendered by the tyranny, petty at first, over 
the unprotected black race, has betrayed these miserable 
wretches into the mistake of supposing they could lord 
it over the white race — that is all. 

This latest crime is more showy, but the hearts are no 
blacker than before. And the hearts have been made 
black by the system. How else will you explain this ap- 
palling fact ; there are women, with babes in their arms, 



104 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

who will declare that this murder in cold blood of a man 
in the presence of his wife is chivalrous ! This is mon- 
strous, when judged by any system of philosophy. There 
• is but one solution of the mystery: underlying all the 
ferocity of such a sentiment, is found the subtle working 
of mere pride of caste. Slavery has debased the feminine 
and human sentiments with which they were born. That 
code of morals always did tend to barbarism. The young 
men of the South were corrupt before the war. The wo- 
men were brutalized in the finer feelings of natural de- 
cency. They would send women to be stripped and 
whipped by men for a price. Passion grows wild with 
mere indulgence. Hence it is that a deed combining so 
much of execrable meanness with so much of hellish cru- 
elty, find women unsexed enough to applaud it ! Home 
on the diabolical system it represents, do I soberly urge 
the responsibility of this murder. It is high time to have 
done with it, root and branches. 

3. Once more : Let us learn here to-day the power of 
martyrdom in fixing great principles. President Lincoln 
has been useful in his life, far beyond what falls to the 
common lot of even the most patriotic and public-spirited 
men. But his death has confirmed his usefulness — made 
it illustrious, influential, and immortal. 

In the natural course of time his period of official service 
would have ended. His administration of the govern- 
ment would have been canvassed cautiously, and, perhaps, 
uncharitably criticised, and, by some parties, condemned. 
By this sudden, tragic close of it, however, it has been 
forced into prominence. It will now be marked forever. 
All the principles it has aimed to establish are settled 



ROBINSON. 105 

hereafter beyond a peradventure. The documents he has 
added to the archives of the nation are sealed with blood. 
This republic will take no step backwards from the vantage- 
ground to which he had led the banner of its sovereignty. 
Even his policy will have weightier influence than that 
proposed by any living man. The noble archer has fallen 
in death, before he could really know how princely were 
the shots he made ; but the arrows he sped latest are' yet 
out in the air, over the sea, and will strike unerringly the 
mark. And when they who stand nearest to the spot 
where the shafts hang quivering, look around to discover 
whose was the sinewy strength that sent them so forcefully 
and so true, they will find that another hand, just as firm, 
has assumed the bow, and another eye, just as keen, has 
discerned the same target. 

They who oppose an honest man living, are ever among 
the first to honor him dead. JSTobody dares uproot a 
standard planted by a loved leader who poured out his 
life at the foot of its staff. Perhaps it was this which was 
needed to bring our people together permanently. Per- 
haps this was the essential condition of our restoration to 
unity, that we become reconciled over an open grave. It 
may be that party-spirit will yield now, and bury the 
bitterness of its animosity in a martyr's tomb. 

You will recall the touching fable of Pom an history. 
A vast seam opened in the land, in the very midst of the 
Forum, disclosing a yawning abyss which they could not 
fill with rocks or with soil. At last the soothsayers 
declared that the commonwealth could be preserved only 
by closing the gulf ; and the gulf could be closed only by 
devoting to the gods, who had opened it, what constituted 



106 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

the principal glory and strength of the people. At this 
all stood aghast. But there was one Curtius, a youth of 
high birth, who, hearing the deliverance, demanded of his 
countrymen whether their arms and their courage were 
not the most valuable possessions they owned. They 
gave him assent with their silence. And then the heroic 
warrior, arraying himself in full armor, and mounting his 
horse, rode headlong into the chasm ; whereupon the earth 
immediately closed, and over the memorable spot swept a 
placid lake bearing his name. 

Shall we say that now our divided country will come 
together again, when he who seemed the glory and strength 
of the American people has gone down in the breach ? 
Shall not his sacrifice avail for propitiation to that foul 
spirit of sectional pride which rent the land asunder ? 

4. And this leads me on to mention a final lesson. We 
see now the inevitable triumph and perpetuity of our 
cause. We are not hero-worshipers in any degree. We 
never were. But we believe in God. We entered upon 
this war not willingly, not of our own accord. We have 
been fighting for a principle. That we have never sur- 
dered nor forgotten. What we loved this leader for was 
what we deemed truth to our cause. 

What is our cause ? It is easier to say what it is not ; 
for its essence is negative. Whatever this crime of assas- 
sination is, -whatever it represents, whatever it aimed at, 
whatever was the spirit that prompted it, whatever may be 
now wickedly offered in its apology — just not that is our 
cause. And as that crime, in spirit, in purpose, in instiga- 
tion, was all in the interest of human bondage, so our cause 
embraces all that is antagonistic to that system. There 



ROBINSON. 107 

never has been but one issue in this terrible contest. Under- 
neath all these evident questions has been lying one which 
some of us studiously labored to ignore ; and that was 
concerning the dignity of universal labor, and the absolute 
equality of all races before the common law. He who, at 
this late day, shuts his eyes to this fact, is neither intelli- 
gent nor wise. We have fought for an open Bible, a free 
school, an unfettered press, and a Scriptural pulpit. 

In all the doctrines ostentatiously put forth by our foes 
— States' rights, uncontaminated blood, family pride, 
sectional independence — there has ever been this keen, 
sharp liking for slavery as a social system. They recognized 
it as a kind of secret zest among themselves ; as voluptu- 
aries recognize, with an understood leer, a favorite lust ; 
as wine-bibbers recognize the subtle flavor of an indescrib- 
able liquor. Our cause consists in precise opposition to 
that. We, therefore, have stood for the rights of men, 
the truth of the Gospel, the principles of humanity, the 
integrity of the Union, the power of Christian people to 
govern themselves, the indefeasible equality of all the crea- 
tures of God in natural conditions of existence, no matter 
what may be the color of their skin. So the nations of 
the world have looked upon us, and held us responsible. 
We were the enemies of all class-systems, castes, and aristoc- 
racies. W r e were the champions of manhood in all that 
was noble, of womanhood in all that was pure. This has 
been, and still is, our cause. 

And what I call you to learn now is, that this cause is 
safe. A martyr's blood has sealed the covenant we are 
making with posterity. Oh, the glories of our immediate 
prospect of usefulness in the years to come ! The Republic 



108 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

is secure. The Union is confirmed as a perpetual federa- 
tion of States. The peril through which we have just 
passed has no parallel. Our Government, as an entirety, 
was aimed at with one savage blow. Such a stroke, on 
any other nation, would have rocked Christendom to its 
centre. Yet our nation is untremulous as the primeval 
granite. The most delicate balances of commercial life 
show not even the semblance of noticeable variation, even 
when this violence of a ton's weight all at once jars the 
beam ! Our cause is eternally secure ! 

Think, then, as we close our meditation upon this martyr 
life, how strangely God has overruled much that seemed 
so destructive to our good. On that very day — they call 
it Good Friday — there is annually represented, in the 
Sistine Chapel, at Home, the disaster of the world when 
the Redeemer was crucified. Thirteen lamps are lit in the 
darkness, ranged in pyramidal form, the topmost one con- 
ceived to be the symbol of Messiah. A low, mournful 
chant from the Lamentations continues to echo through 
the building, while one light after another is extinguished 
at intervals until twelve are gone out. Only the loftiest 
and the brightest remains ; and still the chant moans on. 
Then the last one is struck, and every glimmer perishes in 
total gloom. Thereupon the music ends. A moment 
succeeds, of unutterable oppression — rayless and stifled — 
and then one voice breaks the silence ; a voice, wailing, 
piercing, as if from a crushed and broken heart, lifting the 
burden of the Miserere ; the grief of the race over its 
Helper and its Hope. 

Fitting seems the symbol to us now, as we look only on 
the earthly side of this tremendous loss ; on that same day, 



ROBINSON. 109 

while the shadows were gathering in the chapel of that 
seven-hilled city, our light appeared to go out, and the 
nation was in the gloom. 

But to-day, let us look on the heavenly side. How 
sweet and calm it is to think of that great, brave heart, 
this Easter Sabbath ! He is not here, but risen. Far 
beyond the sound of battle, far beyond the turmoil of 
state, in the infinite realms of gladness, that troubled 
mind has found its rest. Mourned, as never before martyr 
was mourned ; loved, as never before statesman was loved ; 
honored, as never before patriot was honored ; he has gone 
down to a spotless grave. High over all human passion 
that disembodied spirit stands, free as the thought that 
follows him ; the eye of faith seems to behold him even 
now on the radiant plain of eternity ; on either side falls 
away every official adornment ; the soul of the Christian 
man bends in all humility before his Maker's presence, 
saved by grace ; saved, not because he wore the robes of 
the highest station on the globe ; saved, not because of his 
rare gifts of affection or intellect ; saved, not by reason of 
the blessed deeds he had done ; saved, merely because of 
his faith in the Saviour, that he learned by the graves of 
the boys that fell at Gettysburg ; and, as you gaze after 
him, with a subdued and tearful heart, you can only pay 
him the tribute that trembles on the lip that speaks it — 

" He was a good man, and a just ! " 



SERMON VI. 



EEV. ¥11. IVES BUDESTGTOX, D. D. 



u Surely ihe wrath of man shall praise thee : the remainder of wrath shalt 
thou restrain." — Ps. TG: 10. 

Our honored, trusted, and beloved President is dead, and 
by the hand of an assassin. Can we believe it? Can we 
bear it ? He has been growing upon our confidence and 
affection, so constantly and so largely, that it is both a 
personal and a national bereavement ; it is a loss to each 
of us and to all of us. We have lost a friend who was a 
father to the humblest in the land, and a Ruler who was 
the Saviour of the country. I have been looking for com- 
fort for myself and for you ; I have found it, and I think 
you will, in the familiar, but still unexhausted and inex- 
haustible truth contained in the text. The wrath of man 
shall praise God! Suppose it were not so; that God 
could not do it, or would not? What then? God would 
not be God ; he would not have the power, or he would 
not have the love, that is the very essence of his nature. 
So sure is the doctrine which is the foundation of our 
peace and hope before God. " Surely," says the psalmist, 
and " shall" — observe how strong the words he chooses — 
" Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee." The latter 
clause is susceptible of another and better rendering : 



112 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

" The remainder of wrath shalt thou gird about thee." It 
is not that he restrains it ; his power and wisdom are 
still more conspicuous in giving it license, and yet making 
it his servant. It is not necessary for God to restrain hu- 
man wrath, as if any parts, or consequences of it, passed 
beyond his control, and he was compelled to meet power 
with power; but having made men free, he uses their 
freedom, so that the remainder of wrath, its last shreds, he 
girds himself with, as a man buckles his sword-belt around 
him. He makes it his strength and ornament. It is not 
enough to say, human malice effects nothing against God ; 
it praises him, it brings about his purposes, he uses it as a 
weapon, it is made so subservient as to seem to be, what 
the wisdom of God forbids us to believe it is, necessary to 
his glory. This is a strong statement of a precious truth. 
We may repose the most perfect confidence in God, that 
instead of being thwarted by the rage of men, he will use 
it as an instrument, and whether men are good or bad, 
they will be made to serve him : the good, of their own ac- 
cord ; the bad, in spite of their evil designs. 

I might show the truth of this by many examples, some 
of which are familiar, and have been cited by inspired 
authority to establish the doctrine. Pharaoh and Sen- 
nacherib are said, in Holy Scripture, to have been raised 
up for the very purpose of exhibiting God's power in them, 
and making him known throughout all the earth. And 
this, without in the least abridging human freedom and 
blameworthiness, as was most conspicuously shown in the 
killing of the Lord of glory, " delivered by the determi- 
nate counsel and foreknowledge of God," but " taken by 
wicked men, and by wicked hands crucified and slain." 



BUDINGTON. 113 

But we" need not go to past histories, not even when in- 
terpreted by inspired penmen. The event of to-day pro- 
claims God, his power, and wisdom, and love, as really as 
any event which ever provoked a nation's tears, and 
clothed them in sackcloth. The w T rath oi man has praised 
God, shall praise him, and is praising him now. Be not 
afraid of any manifestation of human wickedness and 
rage. Be not surprised, and let no sense of loss and de- 
feat overwhelm you, because the spirit of Rebellion, in its 
dying throes, mad with shame and despair, has stung 
itself to death by striking at the sacred person of the 
Chief Magistrate. Even now, amid the wild excitement 
of this hour, with the surges of grief sweeping over the 
nation, every patriot bosom tumultuating. with conflicting 
emotions, we already see enough to say, " The wrath of 
man shall praise God." It is not all darkness above us ; 
through the rifts of the clouds the light is shining, glimpses 
of the infinite flood filling the eternal heavens. 

Let me, now, ask your attention to a few of the con- 
siderations, which may aid you to understand how the 
wrath of man, in compassing the death of our President, 
shall yet praise God. 

1. In the first place, it shall do it by revealing the 
wickedness of this rebellion. 

There would seem to have been evidence enough of this 
already ; with bursting hearts we are ready to exclaim, we 
did not need this last act to make the rebellion the most 
tragic of crimes. Considered simply as rebellion against 
just authority, it must be held to be a sin against God, so 
long as the 13th chapter of Romans maintains its place in 
the Bible, and binds the consciences of Christians. Eor 



114 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

is it possible to mitigate this sentence, by quoting the 
exceptional cases in which the right of revolution is to be 
allowed. Our enemies themselves being judges, this was 
no exceptional case; no grievance had been endured by 
the South ; on the contrary, her foremost statesman, the 
Yice President of the Confederacy, hacl publicly declared, 
and abundantly shown, that the Government at "Wash- 
ington had never done them a wrong, but had been the 
most beneficent of governments, and that from the begin- 
ning the South had controlled the legislation of the 
country, and had received the lion's share of the honors 
and emoluments of the Government, while bearing the 
least considerable portion of its burdens. If rebellion 
ever was a sin, therefore, and St. Paul declares it always 
is, this was the greatest 6in against God that ever was 
inaugurated. It began in a conspiracy worse than Cati- 
line's ; it secretly plotted death to the constitution, w r hile 
in the enjoyment of its honors and immunities ; it raised, 
organized, and drilled armies, while nobody, but them- 
selves, believed that war was possible, or intended ; and 
when at last the strange rebellion was actually born, it 
came not less of perjury towards God, than of treason 
towards man. 

Thus conceived, and thus brought forth, its whole history 
has been marked by cruelties, which have been only the 
more diabolical, because they have been practised under 
the studied hypocrisies of thanksgivings, and fasts, and 
humble professions of humanity and injured innocence. 
The most flagrant falsehoods have been invented to fire 
the Southern heart; the most ferocious passions engen- 
dered, venting themselves upon wounded men, and the 



BUDINGTON. 115 

unresisting bodies of the slain ; and all this, while the 
Government, actuated by the most merciful of men, and the 
most paternal of rulers, was holding the olive-branch in one 
hand, and the sword in the other. At length, in its adult 
stature, the rebellion culminated in a malignity, which 
has absolutely no parallel in the military annals of man- 
kind, in the starvation of prisoners of war, adopted 
when the novelty of the war had worn off, when no 
apologies of impulse and sudden gusts of passion could be 
pleaded, but entered upon as a system, and prosecuted 
with a calm and unrelenting purpose, until by tens of 
thousands the naked, the frozen, and the starved were 
consigned to a death in comparison with which the cruel- 
ties of Indians and Sepoys were mercies. I do not over- 
state the facts — would God I did ! I have just seen a 
letter from Dr. C. R. Agnew, a gentleman of the highest 
professional skill in the city of New York, and who, from 
love of country, and in the midst of a large and lucrative 
practice, has consecrated conscientiously one-third of his 
time to the service of his country in connection with the 
Sanitary Commission. No one can doubt his competency 
to testify, nor his character as a Christian man ; and I 
will now read from his letter, dated at Wilmington, N. C, 
March 20, 1865. It is painful for me to read it in your 
presence, ye mothers and sisters and wives ; it will be 
painful for you to hear it, but you must do it, and hold 
your minds to the facts which are thus certified to you, 
for only by knowing these facts, and feeling as they will 
make you feel, can you understand this rebellion, and the 
justice of God in dealing with it. Dr. Agnew writes : 
" Many of the men were in a state of mind resembling 



116 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

idiocy, unable to tell their names, and lost to all sense of 
modesty, unconscious of their nakedness and personal con- 
dition. Some of them moved about on their hands and 
knees, unable to stand upon their gangrenous feet, looking 
up like hungry dogs, beseeching the observer for a bite of 
bread or a sup of water. Some of them hitched along on 
their hands, as they were able, pushing gangrenous feet, 
literally reduced to bone and shreds, before them. Others 
leaned upon staves, and glared from sunken eyes through 
the parchment-like slits of their open eye-lids into space, 
without having the power to fix an intelligent gaze upon 
passing objects. Others giggled and smirked and babbled 
like starved idiots ; while some adamantine figures walked 
erect, as though they meant to move the skeleton home- 
wards so long as vitality enough remained to enable them 
to do so. To see the men who remain here in hospital 
would move a heart as hard and cold as marble. Their con- 
dition is that of men who have for months suffered chronic 
starvation. Their arms and legs look like coarse reeds 
with bulbous joints. Their faces look as though a skillful 
taxidermist had drawn tanned skin over the bare skull, 
and then placed false eyes in the orbital cavities. They 
defy description. It would take a pen expert in the use 
of every term known to the anatomist and the physician 
to begin to expose their fearful condition." 

But all this long history of war, culminating in this 
frightful crime against humanity, was not enough to make 
apparent the wickedness of the rebellion ; there were 
among ourselves not a few sympathizers and apologists, 
and among foreign nations it still wore an air of respecta- 
bility. " Its authors and leaders," we were told, " were 



BUDINGTON. 117 

honorable, chivalric men ; they never could be subjugated ; 
we must let them go and establish a slave empire, or by 
an inglorious compromise become ourselves partners of 
their crime." And one thing more was necessary to unite 
all hearts at home, and make the cause of freedom the 
cause of civilization and mankind : the arm that had 
struck at the life of the American nation must be per- 
mitted to strike clown the person of the American Presi- 
dent. It has been done. The wrath of man has expended 
itself, and who does not see that that wrath shall praise 
God ? This last revealing act has brought home to every 
man the murderous irialignity with which the rebellion 
was instinct. When our President fell, " you and I and 
all of us fell down." 

The rebellion is no longer an abstraction — it is murder. 
Treason is no longer a mere opinion, as respectable as any 
other while the war lasts, and the better opinion if it tri- 
umphs ; but it is red-handed violence, stealing behind the 
back of our chief to murder him, and breaking into the 
sick-room of our leading statesman to stab him in his bed. 
Let who will speak well of this rebellion hereafter, neither 
you nor I may care. The venue is changed ; we are hence- 
forth no more concerned than the rest of mankind ; our 
enemies have made themselves outlaws, and our cause is 
merged in the cause of humanity. Eternal justice is 
avenged. The wrath of man praises God ! 

2. But I proceed to make a second point in illustration 
of the text. We learn the wickedness of that system of 
slavery, which has nurtured the implacable, man-hating 
and God-defying spirit, revealing itself in the murder of 
the President. 



118 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

It is no new thing that we see to-day, only now we see. 
it, and feel it, as we did not when it was grinding the poor 
bondman in the earth. The wisdom and goodness, in one 
word the glory of God, is conspicuous in this, that men 
now take part with God in his abhorrence of crime per- 
petrated upon the humblest of his creatures. If yon will 
reflect a moment, if you will call to mind the facts by 
which slavery has expressed itself, ever since yon can re- 
member, you will recognize the same spirit, and the great 
criminal of to-day, who has draped our houses and our 
churches in black, is a legitimate child of slavery ; no new 
thing has happened under the sun, only a new exhibition 
of an old thing ; it is but the outcome of that prond insur- 
rection against human rights, which has trampled on men 
for more than two centuries. Call it what you will, a 
Patriarchal system, which brings down to our times the 
virtues and blessings of the highest style of manhood ; a 
system of domestic life, good enough for gentle woman to 
cherish in the name of the family and the sanctities of 
private life ; an order of society which the minister of God 
is to baptize with a Christian name, and in the conserva- 
tion of which, the church of God in America is to find 
her mission ; call it what you will, I know that the separa- 
tion of husband and wife, the sale of little children out of 
a mother's lap, the withholding of wages from the laboring 
poor, and the denial of knowledge to the mind, which is 
as much the birth-right of the human soul, as the light of 
the sun is of the human body ; I know that these things 
are sins against God, and sins against him who said, " In 
as much as ye did it to one of the least of these, ye did it 
unto me," such that even all the tears and blood and groans 



BUDINGTON. 119 

of this civil war, are not too severe an expression of the 
righteous judgment of God ! But oh ! the difference be- 
tween knowing this, and feeling it, as we do to-day, when 
^this violent invasion of the sacred rights of man has 
entered our hearts through the sacred person *of the 
rej>resentative head of the nation ! Many a poor black 
man has fallen, shot from behind, who died, as our Presi- 
dent did, for the assertion of human rights ; and although 
each of these murders revealed as much of wickedness to 
the infinite heart of God, as this last, they did not to us. 
Many a traveler at the South, not black but white, for no 
greater crime than the declaration of his belief in the 
inalienable rights of all men, and many suspected of such a 
declaration, or of such a belief without the declaration, 
have been murdered and left swinging from the branches 
of trees ; but the intelligence, when it came North, only 
wrapped in mourning some solitary family, or some little 
circle of relatives bereaved ; we did not feel it, and could 
not feel it, as now when the fell spirit of slavery has 
stricken down our President, and draped a nation in the 
emblems of mourning. 

I do not presume, with my present knowledge, to charge 
this crime upon individuals ; we must await the develop- 
ments of the trial to know who are implicated in the 
bloody conspiracy ; but I do take it upon myself to say, 
that slavery is responsible for this crime, the proof is 
demonstrative, it could not be stronger. The only right, 
that slavery has, is the might of a superior over an inferior 
race ; and as if conscious of its origin, it has always opposed 
violence to reason. It has taught that it was right to kill 
a resisting black man, and equally a protesting white man. 



120 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

Since the war has raged, nothing has been more common 
than to threaten with assassination the agents of the Gov- 
ernment, and especially its head. Rewards have been 
offered ; vicious and uneducated young men have been 
inspired with the ambition; and when at last one has 
been found, bold enough and mad enough to do it and 
succeed, it will be impossible, in the recoil of public feel- 
ing, and in the fear of the execration of mankind, to deny 
the parentage and training of the act. It matters not, 
who or what the miserable tool was, what his name or his 
antecedents, whether a Northern sympathizer, or Southern 
rebel, he but embodies the spirit of slavery, he is but the 
hand that executes its savage command. This, therefore, 
is the vindication of God's providence. He has given 
vent to the wrath of man, till it has fully declared itself, 
and arl men seeing detest it. Slavery stands revealed, 
for the abhorrence of mankind ; its last act, in the rebound 
strikes itself upon the head, and in the excess of its wrath, 
it praises God ! 

3. We learn the folly, as well as madness of sin. And 
so the wrath of man shall praise God. 

The thought of the murderer was to avenge the South, 
and destroy our national Government ; the effect is to 
bury the cause of the South beneath the execration of 
mankind, and gather around the Government the strength 
of all loyal hearts, and the sympathy of every civilized 
people. Was there ever an instance like this of the 
insanity of wickedness ? Destroy the Government ! 
ISTever was it stronger. It is the revelation of a strength 
we scarcely dared claim, and which was never suspected 
abroad. It is lodged in the hearts of the people, and is 



BUDINGTON. 121 

as indestructible as the people themselves. The ship of 
state scarcely feels a tremble as the helmsman falls at 
his post ; another hand is on the wheel, the machinery 
never intermits its action, nor even feels a jar, the good 
ship falls off not so much as a point from her course, and 
is now as safe and sound as when our loved and elected 
chieftain guided her with a wisdom, patience, and faithful- 
ness never surpassed. Probably no two men in the 
nation could be struck down, whose death would be a 
greater calamity to leading rebels .than that of Lincoln 
and Seward. The Government can spare them, for by the 
blessing of God upon their wise administration of public 
affairs, it is now sure of the support of the people, and of 
the respect of foreign nations; and there are other men, 
as capable to guide the policy of pacification and recon- 
struction. But the rebels, the leading and responsible 
rebels, cannot spare these men, least of all by a death 
occasioned or inspired by them. The armies of Grant 
and Sherman have destroyed the body of the rebellion. 
Mr. Lincoln's death its spirit. From this hour forth not 
a shred of respectability remains to it ; and as this intel- 
ligence shall reach the nations of the old world, its adher- 
ents, from very shame, will fall off from it, and its 
representatives abroad in the midst of the horror of man- 
kind be compelled to employ the language of apology and 
deprecation. And this by their own act ! Their mad 
threats, their insane spirit has at last found a head and a 
hand; and nothing has been wanting but success to 
defeat it. God is praised, and by the wrath of man. 
There is something wonderful about this. " How unsearch- 
able are the judgments of God, and His ways past finding 



122 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

out ! " The very mercifulness of Mr. Lincoln, the fact that 
as far as possible in faithfulness to public interests, he was 
bent upon showing kindness to individuals, the fact that 
of all men in this country he least of all deserved to die 
by' a rebel bullet, this has made him the fittest sacrifice for 
his country, and given his blood a power over friend and 
foe, to make friends, or to banish enemies, which no other 
event could possibly equal. A man who was regarded as 
the father of the people, and the saviour of his country, 
has been murdered, for no fault of his own, but as the 
representative of a righteous cause, as the man who stood 
for you and me, and for the cause of the down-trodden, 
and for the liberties of millions yet to be ; and his blood, 
thus shed, is doing and will do, what his life, and no other 
life could accomplish. It has united our countrymen, as 
they never were before ; around the bier of Lincoln, they 
have felt and acted as one family. This great national 
sorrow, if it has not made us one nation, has proved us 
one. Common emotions have done much to knit to each 
other the hearts of our countrymen ; taking his life and death 
together, I do not hesitate to say, that Abraham Lincoln 
has done more than any one man that ever lived to make 
the American people one nationality ! I do not mourn 
for Lincoln ; his best friend need not mourn for him ; he 
died at the acme of his fame : he died in a wav to make 
the most of his virtues, his loving, kindly nature, it has 
all borne fruit in his death ; he is embalmed forever in the 
hearts of his countrymen, and his blood is the cement of 
that Union to the preservation of which he religiously 
consecrated his life. He was happy too, in the time of 
his death, it was the sunrise of peace upon the land ; a 



BUDINGTON. 123 

momentary pang, he knew not whence or what it was, 
and he was happy in death. 

" His suffering ended with the day, 

Tet lived he at its close, 
And breathed the long, long night away, 

In statue-like repose. 
But when the sun, in all his state, 

Illumined the eastern skies, 
He passed through Glory's morning gate, 

And walked in Paradise." 

If then he has not suffered loss, and the country, nnited 
by sorrow, has gained ; behold the folly and madness of 
this great wickedness ; see ! how the wrath of man praises 
God! 

4. There is another influence of Mr. Lincoln's death 
which illustrates the text. It checks that unreasonable, 
and I will add unchristian charity, which ignores the guilt 
of sin, and denies the necessity of its penalty. 

People are talking of justice now, not forgiveness. 
There is for the moment wild talk of vengeance ; for one 
extreme is apt to generate another ; and vengeance is an 
extreme, but no more so than indiscriminate pardon. 
Before this war broke out, a lax theology prevailed 
amongst us, which had succeeded, to a considerable extent, 
in banishing from our pulpits, and from the minds of our 
people, the old and vital doctrines of the Gospel, the 
intrinsic evil of sin, and the absolute necessity of penalties 
to vindicate the law of God, and, by consequence, the 
need of an infinite atonement to open the way for pardon. 
Men ceased to fear God, or reverence his law; the guilt 
of sin was denied, it was only a mistake at worst ; hell 



124 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

was derided as a superstition ; and many were lapsing 
into infidelity and atheism. At the same time, and by 
legitimate consequence, low views were entertained of 
government, as God's ordinance, capital punishments 
were abolished, penitentiaries were no longer penal, 
criminals were sympathized with, and pitied rather than 
blamed, and the greatest criminals were the most shielded ; 
treason had shrunk to the dimensions of a political theory, 
and was no longer a crime, much less the greatest crime 
known to the statute-book and possible to the citizen, 
while murder had lost its revolting character, by no longer 
putting the murderer's life in peril. From all this the 
war, we thought, had redeemed us ; it had certainly taught 
us fundamental lessons of right and wrong, and made a 
chasm between them, in the blood of our sons, which 
nothing ever seemed able to fill up. But with the success 
of the national arms, and the comparative subsidence of^ 
the rebellion, there was fast returning upon us our old and 
loose way of thinking and talking. Bloody treason began 
to be whitewashed ; and the chief traitors found apologists, 
and men pleaded for the lives of traitors, who would have 
been the first to fall by assassination had the treason 
triumphed. How far this reaction would have gone, but 
for the last great crime of the rebellion, none can tell. 
The dying viper might, and probably would have been 
nursed into life again by the warm confidence of a country 
into whose bosom it had struck its venomous fangs. The 
genius and the virtues of the military leaders of the South 
were praised, as if the brilliant qualities of criminals, 
instead of enhancing, diminished the crime. A base-born 
hero-worship was already preparing to sacrifice the sacred 



BUDINGTON. 125 

interests of right to the pretensions of a proud aristocracy. 
But blessed be God ! we have been spared this shame ; in 
the hour of our triumph we have not been permitted to 
fall down, and beg pardon of our conquered foes for the 
heroism of our slaughtered sons. God's providence has 
saved us this ! The wrath of man has been allowed one 
more expression, that we may not mistake, and that all 
the world may know, the malice, strong in death, of this 
man-hating and God-defying rebellion ! It has stood for 
its picture once more, lest through the smoke of battle the 
features of the demon should be obscured ; now upon the 
dark back-ground of the war, like a retiring tempest, a 
miscreant leaps upon the stage, brandishing the assassin's 
dagger, exulting in the murder of our good President ! 
Blessed be God ! the wrath of man shall praise Him ! 

5. There is a still more impressive lesson to be learned. 
God has a right to the blood of his servants, no less than to 
their life. There are times when the death of a good man 
will do more than his life can by any possibility. Suffer- 
ing wrong with patient love will sometimes triumph, when 
everything else fails. God needed, for His purposes, the 
death of His Son, so imperatively needed it that not even 
the prayer of that Son, whom His Father always heard, 
could avail to make the cup pass from him. God needed 
the blood of the martyrs, in their day, to corroborate and 
sanctify His Gospel ! God needed, likewise, the blood of 
Abraham Lincoln ! We can already see that it is doing 
what his life and his best services were powerless to accom- 
plish. When leaving his home at Springfield, giving him- 
self to his country, and asking the prayers of God's people 
for him, he gave himself equally to life and death. Even 



126 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

then threats of assassination new thick and fast about 
him, they paved his way to the capitol, he was almost in- 
volved in their toils before he reached it, and, now that 
the threat is accomplished, he has fallen a sacrifice, not 
unprepared nor unwillingly. It is a high distinction — I 
might say the highest and not over-state it — when a man's 
death is needed to accomplish his life's work ; and, useful 
as he may have been while he lived, to be still more use- 
ful when he died. There are few men of whom this can 
be said. God places not many in such circumstances, 
that, even when through mortal weakness they die, it 
adds strength to the whole influence and force of their 
lives. Most men die because they must, and their time 
has come ; and, however much their removal may be 
mourned, their death is simply a loss ; it is the payment 
of a debt to nature. But not so with the soldier-like death 
of Lincoln. It gives him an immortality of fame, seals 
with blood and consecrates forever the history of which 
he has been the anointed leader ; and out of such a death 
there is a resurrection of new life for the nation and man- 
kind ! No man's life is to be compared with Christ's, 
and no man's death with His ; but he comes nearest to 
the Divine Man who receives a trust for humanity, carries 
it to a successful issue, and at last dies for it, making his 
life to culminate and triumph in death. This is the high 
calling of men treading after and next the person of 
Christ ! This is the crown of martyrs ! This the calling 
and the crown of Abraham Lincoln ! 

I cannot cease speaking without commending to your 
prayers and confidence him who is called so suddenly to 
the Chief Magistracy of the land. I feel compelled to 



BUDINGTON. 127 

do this, because of the unfortunate impression made upon 
the country by Mr. Johnson at the late inauguration. 
With a haste as unreasonable as it is uncharitable, he has 
been condemned, as if an act proved a habit. There is 
not a man in this assembly who would not feel that .the 
deepest injustice had been done him by such treatment. 
Admitting the worst that has been said, or that can be 
said, of Mr. Johnson's condition on that day, it is as sus- 
ceptible of a favorable interpretation as of an unfavorable. 
It may have been, nay, we are bound to believe it was an 
accident, pure and simple — proof only of an enfeebled 
body,, and of an anxiety, in spite of sickness, to discharge 
a public duty. We have the amplest assurances that this 
was the case. The Vice-President, now President of the 
United States, is entitled to the respectful confidence of 
the American people. The strong and generous testimony 
of General Burnside, yesterday, in New York, is sufficient, 
and will be cordially regarded as such by all loyal and 
patriotic citizens. Let us give him our confidence, and 
pray for him, as we did for his lamented predecessor. 



SERMON VII. 



EEV. JOHiN HcCLmTOCK, D. D., LL. D. 



" Remember them which have the rule over you, . . . whose faith 
follow." — Heb. xiii, 1. 

It is the Lord ; his will be done. The blow has stun- 
ned the nation. Had we no trust in him who conquers 
even the last enemy, " the victory of the grave" which 
calls us together to-day would fill us with despair. And 
even with all the light which the word of God affords, and 
with all the strength which our faith in God gives us, we 
can still only say, " His way is in the sea, and his path in 
the deep waters." We shall know hereafter what he 
doeth ; but we know not now. 

" Remember" says our text, and "follow." 
There is little fear of our forgetting — there is little fear 
of the world forgetting the name of Abraham Lincoln. 
It was the remark of Heine, the German poet and satirist, 
that " men preserve the memory of their destroyers better 
than that of their benefactors ; the warrior's name outlasts 
the philanthropist's." There is some truth in this, taking 
the world's history as it has been. But • it is one of the 
best signs of the times that men's hearts are, more than 
ever, attracted by moral greatness, and that all laurels are 



130 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

not stained with blood. The day is dawning, even though 
its rising sun be dimmed by clouds, and struggles up amid 
gloom, and tears and blood, in which the glory of the re- 
former shall outshine that of the conqueror — in which the 

Saints of humanity, strong, yet tender, 
Making the present hopeful with their life, 

shall be held the true heroes in men's thoughts, as they 
are the true heroes in the progress of humanity, and before 
the eye of God. And to this heroic class belongs the 
name of Abraham Lincoln, who fell, if ever man did, 
fighting the battles of humanity. 

A voice came to us ten days ago from beyond the sea. 
Here is what it says of Abraham Lincoln : " When the 
heats of party passion and international jealousy have 
abated, when detraction has spent its malice, and the 
scandalous gossip of the day goes the way of all lies, the 
place of Abraham Lincoln in the grateful affection of his 
countrymen and in the respect of mankind, will be second 
only, if it be second, to that of Washington himself." 
When Robert Cairnes penned those prophetic words, how 
little did he dream that in a few weeks his prediction 
should become history ! " When the heats of party pas- 
sion are abated !." A work of long and weary time, no 
doubt. Yet it has been done in a day. The fame of 
Abraham Lincoln has not had to wait for the revolving 
years to set it right. The bullet of the assassin has done 
the work of an age. To-day that name stands as high 
before this whole people, of all parties, of all sects, of all 
classes, as it would have stood in a half a century, had the 
blow of the assassin never fallen. Party spirit, for the 



m'clintock. 131 

time at least, is dead. Who thinks of party now ? There 
are doubtless, in this congregation, many men who voted 
against Abraham Lincoln ; is there one of them who does 
not mourn him to-day ? When yon heard that Abraham 
Lincoln was dead — you, who a year ago, perhaps, made 
his name an object of abuse and calumny ; you, whose 
lips were accustomed to speak of that brave, noble, loving 
man as a usurper, perhaps, or at least as a foolish imbecile, 
and an unfit tenant of the highest place in all the world — 
I ask you, when you heard on Saturday morning that Lin- 
coln was dead, did not your heart throb as never before ; 
did not your throat become husky and the damp gather in 
your eyes in spite of you, as you spoke of it ? Party spirit 
for the moment is indeed forgotten. Do not forget the 
lesson ; and when your party journals begin, as they will 
begin very soon, to assail Andrew Johnson, as they have 
in the past assailed Abraham Lincoln, do not be led away ; 
let not opposition be sullied with calumny or embittered 
by hate. 

The streets of the city of New York, and of every city 
in the Union, from Portland to San Francisco, are clad in 
mourning. I have been struck, in going through the 
poorer streets of this city, to find the emblems of sorrow 
more general, if possible, on the abodes of the humble and 
the lowly, than on the stately dwellings of the rich in the 
grand avenues. All over this land, and over all the 
civilized world, I dare say, there shall be grief and mourn- 
ing in the hearts and homes of those who are called the 
" common people" — of whom was Abraham Lincoln. The 
"ruling classes" abroad will grieve also, but for a very 
different reason. The Tories and aristocrats of England 



132 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LTNCOLN. 

have watched, with fear and wrath, the later progress of 
the Eepublic towards triumph ; and they will feel the 
tremor of a new fear when they learn that this good and 
generous man — so tender, so merciful, so forgiving, so full 
of. all peaceful thoughts, that revenge or cruelty could 
find no place in his heart ; this noble, steadfast man of the 
people, at whose feet all their taunts and gibes had fallen 
harmless, whose simple dignity of nature achieved for him 
that serene indifference, that high superiority to abuse and 
calumny which have been claimed as the peculiar attri- 
butes of what are called high birth and breeding — has 
passed away from earth. For they were just learning that 
he loved peace next to justice, and, in the vague terror of 
their conscious guilt, as abettors of the slaveholders' rebel- 
lion, they looked to the gentle ruler, whom they had so 
vilely traduced, to avert the war which their consciences 
told them ought to come. 

But while, for this reason, there will be real grief among 
the ruling classes, there shall be sorrow of another sort 
among all the liberal hearts, among all who have hoped 
and struggled for the future equality of the race, and who, 
these four weary years, have been watching the issues of 
our great war for freedom, with an intensity of feeling 
only next to our own. As for the working classes, every- 
where through the British islands, and on the continent 
of Europe, the name of Abraham Lincoln had come to be, 
for them, the synonym of hope for their cause ; for 

Love had he found in huts, where poor men lie, 

not only in every slave cabin in the South, where he is 
canonized already, but in many a shepherd's lodge of 



m'clintock. 133 

Switzerland — in many a woodman's cabin of the Black 
Forest — in many a miner's hut of the Hartz Mountains — 
in many a cottage in Italy, for there, as well as here, the 
poor had learned to look upon him as the anointed of God 
for the redemption of the liberties of mankind. It is but 
lately that Garibaldi named one of his grandchildren 
Lincoln, little dreaming how soon that name was to be 
enrolled among the immortals. Oh ! how his great heart 
will throb, how the tears will roll like bullets down his 
seamed and furrowed face, when to him shall come the 
sad message, " Lincoln is dead !" 

And now let us ask why all this sorrow? "Whence this 
universal love ? Certainly it was not intellectual gran- 
deur that so drew all hearts towards Lincoln. And yet I 
do not sympathize with much that has been said in 
disparagement of his intellect, although mere mental gifts, 
of the highest order, might well have been eclipsed, in the 
popular estimation, by the sublimity of that moral power 
which overshadowed all his other qualities. But it is 
stupid to talk of him as a man of mean intellect. He had 
a giant's work to do, and he has done it nobly. Called 
upon to steer the ship of state through the mightiest and 
most rapid tide of events that ever swept over a nation, he 
guided her safely, and was within sight of the harbor, when 
he was struck clown at the helm. Even in his speeches and 
writings, where defects of form reveal the want of early 
culture and give room for the carping of petty critics who 
can see no farther than the form, I do not fear to say that 
the calm criticism of history will find marks of the highest 
power of mind. Do you remember his little speech over 
the graves of our martyrs at Gettysburg? I remember 



134 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

the thrill with which I read it, across the sea. It is 
Greek-like in its simple majesty of thought, and even in 
the exquisite felicity of some of its phrases. Nor could 
that have been a mean intellect which enabled this simple 
son of the people, standing among men who piqued them- 
selves upon their refinement and culture, among men of 
large acquirements and polished speech, to hold on his 
own way among them, to take or reject their advice, to 
hear all plans and all arguments, and after all to be the 
real ruler of the nation and of the times. With such gifts 
as God gave him, he was enabled to pierce to the very 
core of a matter, while others, with their fine rhetoric, 
could only talk around it. 

Yet it was not for the intellect, but for the moral qual- 
ities of the man that we loved him. It is a wise order of 
Providence that it is so that men are drawn. We never 
love cold intellect. We may admire it ; we may wonder 
at it ; sometimes we may even worship it, but we never 
love it. The hearts of men leap out only after the image 
of God in man, and the image of God in man is love. 
Oh ! what a large and loving heart was stilled last 
Friday ! How fine, how tender, how all-embracing was 
the love of that old man ! Those of you who have never 
seen him, and never have known the inexpressible charm 
of his simple manner, can never understand how much 
there was in him to love. Men of all classes were alike 
won by his personal magnetism. Those who have 
traduced him most, and those who have been most carried 
away by the blind fury of partisan hate, and have gone to 
Washington to see him, have always come away disarmed. 
Whenever they had talk with the President, whenever 



m'clintock. 135 

those tender eyes opened gently upon them, (they had the 
habit of opening gently,) and they looked through those 
portals of his soul and saw the infinite wealth of tender- 
ness that was there, they yielded to the spell. Illustra- 
tions of the tenderness of his nature abound. A colonel 
in the army was telling a friend the other day, of a time 
in 1862, when he had command of one of the posts, and 
the President visited the place for a few days. This 
officer had never met the President, and had no very 
exalted opinion of him, " but at the end of those ten 
days," said he, " I found that I was in love with him, and 
I could not help it." He related an incident that took 
place one evening while sitting alone with the President. 
Mr. Lincoln was reading Shakspeare, when suddenly 
turning his eyes upon the officer, he said : " Colonel, d6 
you ever find yourself talking with a dead friend as if he 
was present and still living ?" " Yes," said the colonel, 
" I know the feeling, for it has occurred to me often." 
" I am glad I asked you the question," said Mr. Lincoln, 
closing his book and leaning his head upon his hand, " I 
did not know that it was common, but ever since my little 
boy died, I find myself talking with him every day." 

The entire absence of vindictiveness, either personal or 
political, was one of the ripe fruits of Lincoln's native 
tenderness. Did you ever hear of his saying a hard thing 
of his opponents ? After all the vile calumnies heaped 
upon him at home and abroad, did you ever know him to 
utter a single word showing personal hate, or even 
personal feeling? It is a marvellous record. Test our 
public men by this standard, and you will see how loftily 
he towers above them in moral dignity. He lived as he 



136 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

died : the last of his public utterances closed with the 
words, " "With malice towards none, with charity for all." 
This phrase will fall hereafter into that small number of 
phrases, not Scripture, but which men often cite, unwit- 
tingly, as though they were. 

Another striking element of his moral nature was his 
profound faith — a faith not like that of the man who now 
stands at the head of the French people, a blind fatalistic 
confidence in his own destiny, or in the destiny of the sys- 
tem with which he is identified. Nor yet merely an 
uncalculating faith in the wisdom, virtue or steadfastness 
of the American people. Abraham Lincoln had this, in- 
deed ; but it was not all ; he had a profound religious 
faith ; not simply a general recognition of the law of order 
in the universe, but a profound faith in a Personal God. 
He once remarked to me, at a sudden turn in conversation, 
" Ah, Providence is stronger than either you or I," and he 
said it in such a tone as to reveal a habit of thought. It 
was out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth 
spoke. We were discussing at the time the relations of 
this country with Europe, and the effects of his Proclama- 
tion of Emancipation. " When I issued that Proclama- 
tion," said he, " I was in great doubt about it myself. I 
did not think that the people had been quite educated up 
to it, and I feared its effects upon the Border States, yet 
I think it was right; I knew it would help our cause 
in Europe, and I trusted in God and did it." I be- 
lieve that no President since George Washington ever 
brought in so eminent a degree to his official work a deep 
religious faith. Of his personal religious^xperience I can- 
not speak of my own knowledge, but we have more than 



m'clintock. 137 

one cheering testimony about it. I have been assured that 
ever after the battle of Gettysburg he was daily in the 
habit of supplicating in prayer the throne of divine grace, 
as a believer in Jesus Christ, and that from that time he 
classed himself with believers. Oh ! what prayers those 
must have been in the dark days of '63, and how wondrously 
has God answered them. 

I shall not speak of the patriotism of Abraham Lin- 
coln, though it is one of the points of which I had 
intended to speak, but you know all about it. You know 
what a tremendous duty fell to him, and how he did it all 
the way through ; seduced by no blandishment, frightened 
by no threats from the steady pursuit of his one duty — to 
restore the integrity of the Government. How far he 
succeeded is known to you all. The " forts and places w 
which he said he would retake are all ours to-day, and the 
main army of the rebellion is scattered and gone ! 

The manners of Abraham Lincoln have been a matter 
of a great deal of comment, and of snobbish comment 
too. If unaffected simplicity, the most entire ease, and 
the power to put one's visitor at ease, and to do it uncon- 
sciously ; if these are the ultimate results and the final 
tests of refinement, as they unquestionably are, then was 
he the peer of any nobleman in manners. When you 
shall learn to be as easy, as gentle, as truly unaffected, as 
free from all thought of yourself, as Abraham Lincoln 
was, then indeed will you have finished manners. What 
if there were a few accidental remnants of his former 
habits ? Of all the people in the world, we are the very 
last that should think of these. 

Just now, across the sea, men are grieving over the 



138 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

death of a plain man of the people, like Abraham Lincoln, 
a man of the same kind of manners, a man bred to the 
plough, and whose early years were given to trade — Richard 
Cobden. And not merely in naturalness of manners, but 
also in moral elevation, in guileless sincerity, in delicate 
regard for the feelings even of enemies, in true devotion 
to the good of their fellow-men, especially to the cause of 
the poor and oppressed, and in earnest religious faith, were 
these men twin-brothers. Even in outward look there 
was a marked resemblance ; the same tenderness of eye, 
the same pathetic sadness of general expression, and the 
same lurking smile of humor. 

In two weeks after the fall of Sumter, I heard the news 
of it in Paris. Cobden arrived in town, from Algiers, I 
think, just then. Early the next morning I went to him, 
and said, " Are you enough interested in the American 
question to have a few words ? " " Interested ! " said he, 
" interested ! " and the tears started to his eyes. " My 
Grod ! sir, I do not sleep at night ! " We then talked over 
all the probable phases of this great question and its tre- 
mendous issues. Never, until I came home and sat down 
alone with Abraham Lincoln, as I had sat down with 
Richard Cobden, did I know how much alike these two 
men were. How prophetic is it of the near coming of 
the time when all the sophisms of power, by which a few 
have held, and are still striving to hold, the mass of man- 
kind in their iron grasp to make them the tools of their 
ambition and avarice, shall be swept away forever, that, 
all over the earth, in palaces as well as in hovels, there is 
mourning over Richard Cobden and Abraham Lincoln ; 
men that worked with their hands and yet raised themselves 



Yi CLINTOCK. 139 

Liglier than nobles ; precursors of that triumphant Chris- 
tian civilization that is yet to gladden the hearts of all 
mankind with the reign of universal brotherhood. In 
seven years Cobden bowed the neck of the proudest aris- 
tocracy in the world. In five years Lincoln destroyed and 
buried the most cruel, the most dangerous aristocracy that 
ever sought to establish itself in a civilized nation. The 
two representative men of the spirit of the age have passed 
away from earth together. 

We had no fear about Abraham Lincoln, except the 
fear that he would be too forgiving. Oh ! what an epitaph 
— that the only fear men had was that he would be too 
tender, that he had too much love ; in a word, that he 
was too Christ-like ! And how Christ-like was he in 
dying ! His last official words in substance were, " Father, 
forgh'e them, they know not what they do." And on 
Good Friday he fell a martyr to the cause of humanity. 
I do not think there was adequate ground for the fear 
that he would ever have sacrificed substantial justice 
upon the altar of his personal tenderness ; or, that he had 
not the strength and the resolution to punish the authors 
of the rebellion ; yet, after all, in coming ages, it shall not 
be the least of his titles to the veneration and love of 
mankind, that his compeers found no fault with him, 
except that he had too much love. 

Last Friday, we are told, President Lincoln asked Gene- 
ral Grant if he had heard from General Sherman ? Gene- 
ral Grant replied that he had not ; but that he was hourly 
in expectation of receiving despatches announcing the 
surrender of Johnston. " Well," said the President, " you 
will hear very soon now, and the news will be important." 



140 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

" Why do you think so ? " said the General. " Because," 
said Mr. Lincoln, " I had a dream last night, and ever since 
the war began I have invariably had the same dream 
before any important event has occurred." He then 
instanced Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburgh, &c., and 
said that before each of those events he had had the same 
dream. Turning to Secretary Welles, he said : " It is in 
your line, too, Mr. Welles. I dreamed that I saw a ship 
sailing very rapidly by, and I am sure that it por- 
tends some important national event." Dear friends, the 
life of Abraham Lincoln is closed. After a very, very 
stormy voyage, the ship has reached her harbor at last. 
And how, after all these tempests, these fierce blasts, 
these rising floods, how did the ship sail in ? Shattered 
and sinking, with sails all torn and rent ? No, dear friends, 
God ordered it otherwise. Not a mark of the storm* was 
on the noble vessel ; the hull was sound, the spars were 
strong, the sails were spread, with the broad flag flying 
again as it never waved before, and with pennants of red, 
white and blue streaming gloriously and triumphantly over 
all, the ship sailed into port, and the angels of God said 
their glad " All hail ! " So now say I — and I venture to 
speak in your behalf, as well as in my own — Abraham 
Lincoln, Patriot, Philanthropist, Christian, Martyr, Hail ! 
and Farewell ! 

And now, what are to be the results of this tragedy to 
the country and to mankind? It is God that rules, and 
already we see that, even in this terrible crime, He has 
made the wrath of man to praise Him. One thing is 
clear : even now the American people are united as they 
were never united before. Four years ago (or it will be 



h'clintock. 141 

four years within a week), in 1861, I stood in Exeter Hall 
in the City of London, with an audience of nearly four 
thousand people. The London Times of the day before 
had said "the Great Republic is gone." I made these 
words the texts of a little speech to these four thousand 
Englishmen. I ventured to say to them, what in my heart 
I believed to be true, that whatever might be the result 
of civil war elsewhere, and however a single battle 
might turn in the United States, the Government of the 
United States was impregnable ; that the great Republic 
would come forth out of the trial stronger than ever ; that 
however the first battle might go, we should win the last, 
and the rebellion would be crushed. It is but right to 
say that these remarks met with sympathy. The four 
thousand people that sat before me showed every sign of 
feeling; they rose from their seats, they clapped their 
hands, they stamped their feet, they shouted. The four 
years have passed, and the Republic is not gone, thank 
God, but stands out in grander proportions, is established 
upon a firmer foundation than ever before. In the four 
days that have passed since the shot that laid Abraham 
Lincoln low, the work of fifty years in the consolidation of 
the Republic has been done. The morning of the same 
day that saw one President die, saw another quietly 
inaugurated and as quietly performing his functions. True 
there were a few men in Wall street, who seemed to look 
upon it as the harbinger of a golden harvest ; men who, 
if allowed by any chance to pass the gates of the Celestial 
City, would go with their eyes bent downward studying 
some plan to pluck up the golden pavement. Naturally 
enough, these men mistook the mighty import of passing 



142 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

events, and bought gold for a rise. On Monday gold was 
ten per cent lower than on Saturday. 

Another lesson we have learned is this : that in our 
Government no one man. is essential. The Harpers have 
just published a book by Louis Napoleon Bonaparte on 
the life of Julius Caesar. Its object is to teach the world 
that it must be governed by its great men ; that they make 
epochs and not merely mark them. How suddenly that 
book has been refuted, and what a blow has been given to 
this gospel of Napoleon, by the assassination of Lincoln 
and its issues. Here is one greater than Caesar struck 
down as Caesar was, and yet the pillars of the Republic 
are unshaken. What a pitiful anachronism does the 
Imperial plea for Caesarism appear, in presence of the dead 
Lincoln, and the mourning, yet living and triumphant 
Republic ! 

Let us now gather one or two practical lessons for our- 
selves and our children. Hatred of assassination is one of 
these lessons, if, indeed, we needed to learn it. The work 
that Brutus did to Caesar was just as bad a work as that of 
Booth to Lincoln. It was centuries before humanity re- 
covered from the poisoned wound it received from the 
stroke of the dagger that pierced the breast of Caesar. 
Teach your children, moreover, not only to hate assassina- 
tion, but treason as well ; for treason breeds assassins, as it 
breeds all other forms of crime and wrong. You cannot 
be too severe upon it in your thoughts or in your talk ; you 
are severe upon the robber and the assassin ; shall you be 
lenient towards the treason which has begotten both rob- 
bery and assassination? 

Remember, too, that as treason is the parent of assassi- 



m'clintock. 143 

nation, so slavery has been the parent of treason. Is it 
necessary for me to exhort yon to teach yonr children to 
hate slavery too % In this one thing I ask yon to join with 
me this day. Let us bow ourselves before Almighty God, 
and vow that so far as in us lies, none of us will ever agree 
to any pacification of this land, until slavery be utterly 
extirpated. Watch your editors, then ; watch your clergy ; 
watch your generals and soldiers, your admirals and sailors, 
watch even Andrew Johnson, though of that I apprehend 
there will be no need. Watch them all, if need be, and 
see to it that this sprout of hell never shoots* up again in 
the American soil. 

One more lesson, and not the least. If anything I 
have said, or anything that you read or hear in these sad 
days, breeds within you a single revengeful feeling, even 
towards the leaders of this rebellion, then think of Abraham 
Lincoln, and pray God to make you merciful. Think of 
the prayer of Christ, which the President said, after his 
Saviour, " Father forgive them, they know not what they 
do." Let there be no place for revenge in our souls ; jus- 
tice we may and must demand, but revenge, never. 
" Yengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord." I 
counsel you also to discountenance all disorder, all attempts 
by private persons to avenge the public wrong, or even to 
punish sympathizers with treason. I have been sorry to 
hear from the lips of generous young men, under the 
pangs of the President's assassination, sentiments of bitter- 
ness and indignation, amounting almost to fierceness. It 
is natural, no doubt, but what is natural is not always 
right. Indulge this spirit, and you may hear next that 
this man's house or that man's should be mobbed. Mobs 



144 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

are alien to our northern soil ; they belong to another at- 
mosphere than that of free schools and free men. The 
region of slavery was their natural home ; let us have none 
of them. And soon, when the last shackles shall have 
fallen, and throughout our land, from sea to sea, there 
shall be no master and no slave, the blessed Peace shall 
come> for which we have looked, and prayed, and fought 
so long, when the Republic shall be established upon the 
eternal foundations of Freedom and Justice, to stand, we 
trust, by the blessing of God, down to the last syllable of 
recorded Time. 



SERMON VIII. 



EEV. A. N. L1TTLEJOHN, D. D. 



" Know ye not there is a prince and a gre at man fallen this day in Israel." 
— II Samuel iii. 38. 

Brethren, you know the event which has called us 
together amid these badges of sorrow. All sights and 
sounds proclaim it. The very air is full of it. Its min- 
gled horror and sadness may not be uttered. The grief 
that hangs so heavy upon us moves a continent to tears. 
We are but a small company of mourners in the vast mul- 
titude who will to-day bend in anguish over the bier of the 
nation's head. "We were just beginning to see the bow of 
peace wearing out from the vapor and settling over the 
troubled waters. We were just beginning to feel that the 
last chapter had been written in the record of blood. The 
disappointment is bitter and terrible. Without question 
we have at last reached the Marah of the nation's journey 
through the wilderness. The sword that was to pierce us 
through, God has reserved for the hour of victory. The 
land is a fountain of tears, and the hearts of the people 
are bowed as the heart of one man. There could be no 
sorer lamentation, though every house had in it one dead. 
It is made the duty of the pulpit, beyond any other organ 
of public sentiment, to deal with the overwhelming sorrow 
of the hour, to guide and temper the nation's grief, to 



146 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

teach it how and for what to weep, to interpret the sober 
philosophy of the grave, and to press home upon the soft- 
ened, pain-stricken sensibilities of the people those gifts, 
privileges, and destinies which the world can neither give 
nor take away. Certainly our century, with all its intense 
and changeful life, has witnessed no such impressive in- 
stance of the sudden ruin and intrinsic vanity of earthly 
fortunes in the high places of power. Yesterday, Abra- 
ham Lincoln stood upon an eminence which the wisest 
and the best might have envied. His word was clothed 
with the force of law. His hand was upon the secret 
spring of a nation's energies. His opinions were scanned 
and weighed as the foreshadowing of the settled policy of 
a redintegrated republic. On his will and purpose largely 
depended the peace of the world. He had but to speak, 
and two continents gave him audience. To-day, he is 
still in death. He lies where each of us must lie. He 
fills no more space than that allotted to the humblest 
member of the race. Yesterday, he was of good cheer 
at the approaching reward of four years of honest, anxious, 
patriotic toil, with an out-look upon honors manifold, 
and with an assured release from the bitterness of days of 
darkness and fields of blood, his own unexultant but manly 
smile reflecting the profound joy of a redeemed and tri- 
umphant country. To-day, he is gone, as the rest of us 
shall go, to give account of his stewardship to God. 
Alas ! the brevity and uncertainty of the noblest earthly 
career! Let us know and feel that we can mourn intelli- 
gently over this terrible bereavement only as we shall in- 
dividually see in it a new and more pointed admonition 
from our final Judge. 



LITTLEJOHN. 147 

The deed which has deprived the land of its Chief Ma- 
gistrate and, perhaps, the Department of State of its illus- 
trious incumbent, let us not hesitate to say, was worthy 
of the cause which has filled the land with widows and 
orphans — a cause conceived in wickedness, brought forth 
in iniquity, and consummated in a crime which shall live 
forever as the sufficient commentary upon the spirit that 
gave it being. Under no provocation should we be 
tempted to harshness and injustice. But it is neither 
harsh nor unjust — but the simple truth gradually forced 
upon us by the stern logic of events — to say that the mur- 
derous hand which has brought upon us this stupendous 
calamity is, in reality, the same hand which wielded the 
merciless lash upon unresisting victims whose cry there 
was none to hear — the same hand which, tutored*»into law- 
less violence by the cruel and arbitrary instincts of slavery, 
struck clown a senator of New England for presuming to 
exercise freedom of speech — the same hand which kindled 
and led an unprovoked and suicidal rebellion against the 
mildest and freest of governments — which hung and 
slaughtered in cold blood thousands who remained faith- 
ful to their allegiance, and occupied itself at intervals 
with the torture and starvation of the captured in prison 
camps and noisome dungeons. There is no help for it. 
Charity itself can invent no sufficient mitigation of the 
fact. This crime must go into history as the legitimate 
embodiment of the spirit of that greater and once legal- 
ized — protected crime of oppression which, by the decree of 
God, has been swept away, and the very traces of it surged 
out by fire, battle, and blood. It seems as though the last 
bite of the serpent was needed to convince us of its incu- 



148 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

rable and dreadful venom. Henceforth slavery will have 
no apologist in the court of the world's civilization. The 
mark of Cain is upon it, and no hand will be found bold 
enough to brave the infamy of attempting to hide it. 
Consigned at last to the gulf of perdition, with a wild 
and heartless malice, it sought to drag down with it all 
that lay within its reach. It has perished in a way to 
satisfy the proprieties of retributive justice. Its end is 
not merely ruin, but dishonor. Its name will rot with 
the bones of the assassin who directed its last blow. And, 
hereafter, though the common life of the republic shall be 
freed from its insult, menace, treason, and atrocity ; yet 
trumpet-tongued it will continue to bear witness through 
the ages, by a thousand scars, to the malignant and tre- 
mendousfpower of the demon that once possessed it. 

In the death of Abraham Lincoln, the people who have 
been in arms against the national authority, and who will 
soon be sueing for mercy, have lost their wisest and truest 
friend. They have lost one who, beyond any other man 
in official position, was ready to pity their desolation, to 
commiserate their folly, and to receive them back as pro- 
digal sons. They have lost one who had already antici- 
pated and given expression to the latent magnanimity and 
clemency of the national mind. They have lost one who 
would have spared no effort, consistent with the public 
safety and honor, to enable them to retrieve their broken 
fortunes, and renew at the common altar their plighted 
faith. 

But if they from whom we have been estranged during 
these four years of conflict, have lost so much by this 
calamity, what shall be said of our own loss. Say what 



LITTLEJOHN. 149 

we will ; interpret Providence as we may, it cannot be ex- 
aggerated. Happily party differences no longer stand in 
the way of a suitable recognition of the transcendent ser- 
vices of our late Chief Magistrate. It may be doubted 
whether any instance can be cited, in which the mists of 
prejudice have so suddenly parted, only to reveal behind 
them a fame so free from challenge or disparagement. 
Certainly history furnishes no case in which death has so 
instantly invested its victim with the sanctity of an ap- 
proval more spontaneous and universal. The character of 
this man had grown so evenly, so silently, and from such 
modest beginnings ; it had borne vast burdens, wrought 
mighty issues with so little friction ; it had sent its root so 
deep into the core of our life, that w r e knew neither what 
it was to lis, nor how large it was destined to appear in 
coming time, until death spread out before us the quiet 
and solemn shadow of its proportion. The work of the 
public mind in dealing with this character, since it has 
taken its place in the sphere of the unchangeable, has 
been that of recognition, not of discovery. We say to-day 
only what we might have said a week ago, but for the re- 
serve with which the living must always be spoken of. 
The same pure, simple, honest, incorruptible, large-brained 
force of will and conscience that w r e see to-day, and whose 
departure we mourn as something not likely to be replaced, 
has been toiling for us all through these recent years of 
doubt and peril. We saw it, and yet feared to speak too 
strongly of it, lest some flaw or soil should appear before 
its career should close. But now that its record is made rip, 
we may love, revere, and praise in language which, before, 
might have seemed that of partial admiration. 



150 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

History, when it shall give its final verdict, may modify, 
in some particulars, the glowing eulogies of the hour. It 
may be that the nation, under the impulse of sudden and 
profound grief, may claim too much for this man of the 
people. But this much is sure, he will go forever into 
their memory, and the seal will be immovably set upon 
it — that never have they had in that highest and most re- 
sponsible position, an uprightness more unquestioned, a 
wisdom more balanced, luminous, and practical, a gene- 
rosity more lofty, a patriotism more ardent, a cheerfulness 
more patient, a purpose more brave in the day of trouble, 
or a consecration of talent and energy to the common weal 
more absolute. All agree that his heart was too open and 
large to harbor a mean or selfish intent. And as for anger 
and revenge, under immense provocation, none need be 
told that they found no place in word or deed. No ruler 
was ever more reluctant to strike, even when crime crossed 
his path and demanded the blow. There is scarcely an 
infirmity imparted to him by the most unsparing criticism, 
which was not traceable to a certain gentleness of spirit, 
which, however harsh and knotty wills that "make haste 
to the hangman's office" may sneer at, will be accounted 
hereafter, in calmer days, as the only flower of Paradise 
that was able to float on this sea of blood. 

There are some who scruple to call Mr. Lincoln great. 
We are not among them. If he was not great, then, by 
some strange fortune, it fell to his lot to achieve results 
hitherto deemed possible only to the highest order of 
faculty. If he was not great, history will have its most 
startling wonder to record. It will have to show how an 
ordinary man wrought the most extraordinary things in a 



LTTTLE.TOHN. 151 

sphere of action where personal character and official in- 
fluence are subject to the severest scrutiny. It will have 
to show how something less than greatness did what con- 
ceded greatness has always pronounced most difficult. 
The nation, at this hour, grudges not to own him great, 
There is a wisdom in the popular instinct which adjusts 
sorrow to the sense of loss. Judged by this rule, there can 
be no doubt where the common mind of the country 
places this man. There were qualities, gifts, enrichments, 
which he lacked. He had not the severe dignity of Wash- 
ington, nor the acumen and breadth of Hamilton, nor the 
versatility of John Quincy Adams. He had not the electric 
eloquence of Clay, nor the matchless finish of Everett, nor 
the massive strength of Webster. And yet there was in 
him a fullness, ripeness, directness of power, which, if 
measured by what it did, will prove him inferior to none 
of the illustrious names gone before him. There can be 
no dispute as to what was really in him, for he pretended 
to nothing which he had not, and concealed nothing that 
he had. His simplicity and candor made him appear less 
than he was. He spoke and acted with such absence ot 
parade, that all who did not weigh him well thought him 
an honest mediocrity, plodding slowly toward a great end. 
The cheerful ease with which he mastered the most intri- 
cate questions of the time, deceived all but those nearest to 
him as to the magnitude of his labors. He made no claim 
to eloquence. All the more striking attributes of the 
orator w T ere wanting. And yet, in his plain, strong way 
he said things — as when he stood over the heroic dead at 
Gettysburg — which the world will never forget. As a 
writer he was singulary deficient in the ordinary graces ol 



152 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

style. And yet he has left State Papers which will be re- 
garded hereafter as the ablest expositions of the momen- 
tous issues of our time. The elaboration bestowed by 
those in quest of fame upon the vehicle of thought, he be- 
stowed upon the thought itself. Destitute of methodical 
training, utterly without what is technically known as 
culture, there was that in his handling of obscure and 
complicated subjects which evinced the finest fruit ot 
careful intellectual discipline. He never said anything 
that would imply that he thought himself a man of cour- 
age or inclined to self-sacrifice on behalf of imperiled 
principle ; but there are none who knew him well that 
will not at once accord him all the moral qualities of the 
true hero. No man, perhaps, ever had a career which, 
taken in its whole length, was better calculated to invite 
vanity, boasting, and self-sufficiency ; or to develope the 
small weaknesses which, with most men, follow in the 
wake of rapid and unexpected success. But the keenest 
eye fails to detect in him the traces of such qualities. His 
modesty and humility kept pace with his rising eminence. 
And of him it can be said truly — and nothing could be 
more wonderful — that such was the habitual gentleness — 
such the native, robust magnanimity of his character — 
such his incorruptible fairness, that, amid all the fiery 
strifes and clashing factions of a period of tumult and 
revolution, he never alienated a friend, or justly made an 
enemy. 

The word greatness is variable and elastic. It is often 
a term of comparison conveying no absolute meaning. It 
covers all degrees of power from that of confessed genius 
down to that of common-place, but successful talent. 



LITTLEJOHN. 153 

Still, loose and vague as may be the use of the word, it 
has, after all, a very definite signification to the settled 
judgment of mankind. There are certain tests — certain 
properties of character which, wherever they are found, 
assert the presence of true greatness, and secure for it, in 
the critical estimate of the world, the attribute of immor- 
tality. I shall name some of these tests and properties, 
and then inquire how they were answered in the character 
and career of Abraham Lincoln. 

1st. It is a proof of greatness to discharge immense 
responsibilities in times of change and peril, and to hand 
over a trust of extraordinary powers without even the 
suspicion of failure or abuse. There can be no question 
that Mr. Lincoln met this test as completely as any ruler 
of ancient or modern times. He parted with power with 
less regret than he received it. It had no attractions to 
him. It stirred no ambition, tempted to no self-aggran- 
dizement, awoke no dreams of dynastic fame. No one in 
high office could be more scrupulous to mark the rightful 
limitations of authority, or more reluctant to overpass 
them under the pressure of danger to the national life. 

2nd. It is an evidence of greatness to lead and to 
fashion, amid all possible elements of hazard and convul- 
sion, an era of transcendent success in the life of empires 
or republics. Without controversy, we find this in the 
character and administration of this man. He began his 
work amid disadvantages which never can be adequately 
estimated. He encountered difficulties which would have 
utterly overwhelmed a will less patient, cheerful and self- 
poised than his own. And yet the civic and military 
achievements of the Government over which he presided 



154 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

have never been surpassed. The contrast between the 
commencement and the close of his administration will be 
one of the wonders of history. When it began one-half 
the country was ablaze with the flame of rebellion, and the 
other half was dumb with perplexity and the sense of 
coming disaster. There was not only the division of 
geographical sections, but the division of heterogeneous 
races and clashing social institutions. It was an open 
question whether the will of a single part should override 
or obey the sovereign will of the whole body — whether the 
nation was only a heap of atoms or an organic force. In 
the Old World, where it was believed that our trouble 
would develope sympathy, if not friendship, we found only 
envy of our growth, fear of our strength, and studied pre- 
dictions of our failure and ruin. Western Europe was 
rejoicing that the day had come for writing the epitaph of 
republics. How changed all this when Mr. Lincoln's 
career closed. He lived long enough to see the tokens of 
returning peace, the defeat and surrender of hostile 
armies, the closing up of the terrible wound upon the 
nation's life, the utter destruction of the political heresy 
that had plunged the land in fratricidal blood, the fusion 
into a more compact and homogeneous unity of diverse 
races, the confession of all nations that the Republic had 
triumphed, and the joy of the oppressed throughout the 
world over another mighty advance of liberty and justice 
in the affairs of the race. 

3rd. It belongs to the highest order of mind and char- 
acter to mould and govern the opinions of a free people. 
This, Abraham Lincoln did as few have done before him. 
He mastered and directed public sentiment upon the most 



LITTLEJOHN. 1 55 

vital questions. He did it fairly, conclusively, perma- 
nently. With a skill and prescience which will challenge 
the admiration of posterity, he gathered up and crystallized 
the fluid thought of the masses into the statesmanship and 
policy of the hour. Iiis success on this difficult task was 
clue, in the main, to marked peculiarities of intellect and 
administration. He had no theories, no pet fancies, no 
schemes with which he believed his fame identified. He 
was not a bookish statesman. He had no historic idols. 
No school of political thought could wholly claim him. 
He studied all questions demanding his decision under the 
light of facts. His course waited upon events. His 
policy grew naturally out of the emergencies around him. 
His wisdom was of the sort which neglects no fact, but 
gives to each its proper force. He knew how to walk 
with the people, and yet to assert his function as a leader 
and prophet. The time was when some believed him 
slow, timid and vacillating. Results have shown that he 
was only patient, cautious and comprehensive ; and that 
the hot, hasty wills who judged him lived in an atmos- 
phere of fog and confusion. We have had no statesman 
of whom it can be so truly said, that he was, in the work 
that fell to him, so wise an imitator of the developing, 
sanative forces of Nature and Providence, whose great law 
it is to be progressively conservative and conservatively 
progressive. 

4th. It is a quality of greatness to win and to hold in 
high station and amid days of change and peril the con- 
fidence of millions. In this Mr. Lincoln was pre-eminent. 
No case can be named in which a vast people surrendered 
into the hands of their ruler more of their lives, fortunes, 



156 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

and destinies, and yet were freer from doubt, suspicion, or 
complaint. In the darkest hour of the four years past, 
whatever else might give way, there was no change or 
abatement of the popular trust in their head. 

5th. It has always been reckoned a mark of greatness 
to preserve an original, uncorrupted individuality amid 
the frictions and abrasions of a rulership which makes the 
incumbent the depositary of all men's notions, the prey 
of flatterers, deceivers and parasites, the victim of the 
menace.or the blandishments of a dominant party. Who 
has shown this mark of greatness more clearly than this 
man ? The day he died he was no other than he was 
when he left his home for the capitol — save in knowledge, 
experience, trial, service, and suffering. He was ever so 
truly himself that custom could not alter, conventionality 
could not spoil, fashion could not beguile him. Faction, 
with its secret schemes, put its teeth on a file when it 
struck his simple, healthy, honest will. And court syco- 
phants found their occupation gone, as there was in him 
absolutely no vanity, or private ambition to work upon. 

6th. It is the effect of a great man's life to enrich 
by character, deeds, and sufferings, the annals of a people, 
and to multiply their traditions of endurance, heroism, 
and triumph. In this our late President, by general con- 
sent, will rank second only to Washington. 
T 7th, and finally. The sovereign and unchallenged test 
of greatness, as adjudged by all nations and ages, is to 
complete service by sacrifice ; to attest by death what was 
toiled and fought for in life ; to add the martyr's crown to 
the patriot's work. This alone was needed to round out 
and immortalize Abraham Lincoln. God gave him the 



LITTLE.TOHN. 157 

baptism of blood, as he had already given it to the cause 
which he represented, and so translated him into the list 
of the world's leaders, deliverers, emancipators, who plead 
more mightily from their graves than living rulers from 
the seats of power. Let us not doubt, then, that a great 
man has passed from us into history, and joined the powers 
which cannot die. Let us not doubt that our time of sor- 
row has brought forth a character worthy to enshrine its 
immortal issue. This man has gone from us. He needs 
no other monument than the race whom he led forth from 
bondage, and the country saved, under God, by his guid- 
ance. . He has been followed to his grave by such majesty 
and sincerity of grief as never yet waited upon king or 
conqueror, and his memory may be safely left to the keep- 
ing of all lands and ages. 

We have lost the mortal. We have gained the im- 
mortal. We have lost a Chief Magistrate. We have 
gained one who shall henceforth be known among the 
world's benefactors. We have lost a virtue subject to 
change. We have gained a virtue which shall be the same 
until the heavens shall be no more. We have lost a voice 
that might have faltered and a will that might have fallen 
away from its task. We have gained both, exalted and 
consecrated to a wider and nobler mission. We have lost 
a rare combination of gifts. May it not be that we have 
gained another, which, in view of emergencies yet to come, 
shall prove the foresight and adaptation of God's. We 
have lost a man built up into greatness by the institutions 
of liberty and law. We shall gain another proof of the 
power of those institutions to repair all damage and waste 
in the life committed to their keeping. 



158 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

I have spoken of the man, his character, career, and 
services ; I have sketched his place in history, and shown 
why the gratitude and love of this bereaved people should 
cherish and venerate his name. Permit me, in conclusion, 
to indicate what God teaches ns in this sorrow. Once 
more he admonishes us that our strength is not in chariots 
or horses, or men of war, or an arm of flesh. Once more 
He tells us that in the development of His plans there is 
no necessary man. Again He interposes to check the 
instinctive gravitation of mankind toward great person- 
alities, and to strike at the root of all civic and military 
idolatries engendered by illustrious fortune or command- 
ing genius. Again He shifts from shoulder to shoulder 
the mantle of the ruler, the statesman, the conqueror, the 
prophet, to show us that it is only in His wisdom and 
might that we can safely glory. " The earth is weak and 
all the inhabitants thereof. I bear up the pillars of it." 
" God is the Judge. He putteth down one and setteth up 
another." Once more, too, amid the far-sounding joy 
and the waving of multitudinous banners, He suddenly 
opens at our feet the path of humiliation winding on into 
the valley of the shadow of death. Thus, by a calamity 
and bereavement which have pierced the common heart, 
He has seen fit to set up another check to the pride and 
self-confidence of a great people flushed with victory. 
May these admonitions not be in vain. May the grace 
of our Lord Jesus Christ be so poured out to-day upon 
the weeping, prostrate millions of this land " that peace 
and happiness, truth and justice, religion and piety, may 
be established among us for all generations," 



SERMON IX. 



KEV. THEODOEE L. CUYLEK.* 



"And the Lord blessed Abraham in all things." — Genesis xxiv. 1. 

' A few hours since, I came home from witnessing the 
resurrection of the flag over Sumter's walls, and on our 
way the arrow of fatal tidings met us and pierced us 
through. I came in tears to find you all in tears. And 
to-day I only seek to give utterance, in the broken lan- 
guage of grief, to the artless, spontaneous outgush of our 
every heart. " I cannot see to read in the valley of the 
shadow of death," said Christopher North to his class, 
when he returned to them their essays unread, a few days 
after the death of his wife. Nor could I see to write under 
the shadow of this overwhelming sorrow. Let me, in the 
most unstudied language, just talk to you about that dear 
departed father, whose form lies but a few leagues off 
to-day, on its way to the burial. 

It is more than two. centuries since the civilized world 
has received a shock like this. I open the page of history 
and read, that on the 10th of July, 1584, William the 

* The above report of an extemporaneous discourse, delivered in the 
Lafayette avenue Presbyterian Church, on April 23d, is mainly recalled 
from memory. 



160 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

Silent, the founder of the Dutch Republic, was passing 
from his dining-hall to his private apartments, attended 
by his wife. Near the stairway was an obscure arch sunk 
deep in the wall, and almost hidden from view. The 
Prince of Orange had just reached the second of the flight 
of stairs, when a hired assassin darted out from the dark 
archway, and standing within a few feet of the prince, dis- 
charged a pistol at his heart. Three balls entered his 
body ; one of them rebounded even from the wall beyond ! 
William exclaimed, as he felt the wound, " Oh ! my Gocl, 
have mercy upon this poor people !" In a few moments 
he breathed his last in the arms of his faithful wife, Louisa 
of Coligny. 

Gerard, the assassin, dashed out of a side door and en- 
deavored to make his escape by a narrow lane to a spot 
where a horse stood in waiting for him. He stumbled 
over a pile of rubbish in his path, and before he could rise 
again he was seized by several halberdiers who had fol- 
lowed him from the house. He was brought at once 
before the magistrates, was subjected to the most excruci- 
ating tortures, and in a few days was condemned to die 
under the terrible triple agonies of burning, quartering, 
and decapitation. 

No one can read the narrative of the murder of the de- 
liverer of Holland, without being amazed at the coinci- 
dence between the crime of Balthazar Gerard and the crime 
of the brutal Booth. One could almost believe that the 
American miscreant had learned his horrible part from the 
Burgundian fanatic. The lofty and magnanimous character 
of the two illustrious victims — the same cowardly assault 
upon both when unarmed and unprotected — the same wea- 



CUYLEK. 161 

pon employed — the fact that both the victims were at- 
tended by their wives — the method of attemped escape — 
all these furnish a resemblance that is as startling as it 
drawn from the realm of a horrible fiction. The crimes 
were not more coincident than the characters of those who 
figured in these two foremost assassinations of modern 
history. 

William the Silent was a noble representative of Protestant 
heroism, Protestant faith, and Protestant liberty. Gerard 
was the fiendish embodiment of all that was crafty, bigot- 
ed, and revengeful in Spanish Popery. Abraham Lincoln 
was the representative of American Republicanism in its 
most pure and primitive type. In Booth, the butcher, was 
incarnated the diabolical spirit of Southern slavery. He 
is a specimen of the pupils which the " peculiar institu- 
tion" has graduated for half a century. Proud, indolent, 
dissipated, licentious, a slave of the wine-cup, and accus- 
tomed to the unbridled indulgence of his passions, he was 
the very man to step forth as at once the representative 
and the champion of the traitor-confederacy. What Pres- 
ton Brooks mofe feebly attempted in the " Freshman 
class" of slavery, John Wilkes Booth achieved in the 
" Senior year" of its matured iniquity. This astounding 
tragedy at Washington is but the legitimate product of 
the same accursed system that tore down the nation's 
standard at Sumter, that massacred the heroic garrison of 
Fort Pillow, that starved the thousands of Union soldiers 
at Belle Isle, Anderson ville, and on the Charleston race- 
course, and had been for a century, maiming, and branding, 
and torturing God's poor bond-children on innumerable 
plantations. Abraham Lincoln, holding the pen that 



162 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

pierced oppression through with its edict of emancipation, 
is the embodiment of Christian democracy. John Wilkes 
Booth, wielding the assassin's weapon, is the embodiment 
of the bowie-knife barbarism of the slaveholding oligarchy. 
Thanks be to God that the days of that oligarchy are 
numbered ! 

But let ns turn away from the harrowing crime to its 
illustrious victim himself. Let us, as a bereaved house- 
hold, sit down and talk together, in the soft, low accents 
of affection, about the great, the good, the honest, the 
patient, the gentle-hearted, the beloved head of our na- 
tional family, whom God has taken to himself. We are 
too near his coffin to criticise him ; our hearts are yonder 
in that coffin with him. God knows that when the tidings 
of his murder first smote me through on that steamer's 
deck, I could hardly have felt a keener agony if I had 
heard that my wife or child were gone. So you felt ; so 
millions feel ; such will be the pang that will attend this 
tragedy in its circuit around the globe. No man of our 
time could be stricken from his orbit that would leave 
such a startling void ; and no man of any time was ever 
followed to his burial by such myriads of mourners, or 
laid in a grave that was so literally drenched with a na- 
tion's tears. Yes ! the poor ploughboy of a Kentucky 
homestead has a funeral that was not accorded to a Napo- 
leon or a Wellington. 

In selecting a passage for the motto of this unpre-: 
meditated tribute, I could find scores of lines in God's 
word that would be appropriate to the eulogy of our 
martyr-president. But none, perhaps, that could tell 
more briefly his history than these simple words — " The 



CUYLER. 1G3 

Lord bier':- 1 . Abraham in all things.'''' In blessing our 
Abraham., God blessed our regenerated country, and the 
whole household of humanity. Let me point you to some 
of the crowning mercies of the Divine gift — with devout 
gratitude to the Heavenly Giver. 

I. — And first, God blebeed our President with a lowly 
birth. Abraham Lincoln was thoroughly a man of the 
people. The common people of America saw the very 
best that was in themselves when they looked at him. So 
plebeian a President we have never had. Benjamin 
Franklin has hitherto been the type-man of American 
democracy. For remember that our Washington came of 
gentle blood, and belonged to the colonial aristocracy of 
Virginia. He had many of the traits of an English 
country gentleman ; his associates were such men as Lord 
Fairfax, and the patricians of the " Old Dominion." But 
Lincoln was made of that homely stuff that was wrought 
into Andrew Jackson and Daniel Webster. 

Look for a moment at the career that is photographed 
in the following dozen lines : — Born in Hardin County, 
Kentucky, of farmer parentage, on the 12th of February, 
L809 ; his boyhood spent in clearing forests with the 
woodman's axe; one year only spent in the rudimentary 
studies of a district school ; at the age of nineteen toiling 
as a hired hand on a Mississippi flat-boat ; then a clerk in 
a country store of Illinois ; next a student of law from a 
few books borrowed in the evening, to be returned on the 
next morning ; in 1834: a member of the State Legislature ; 
in 1816 in the National Congress; through the year 1858 
measuring weapons with Douglas in the most protracted 
and brilliant political canvass yet waged between Amer- 



164 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

ican debaters ; in I860, chosen triumphantly to the 
Presidential chair ; for four years the central figure in the 
most stupendous conflict of modern times ; re-elected to 
the Presidency by a voice of the people " like the sound 
of many waters"; and from that lofty eminence, in the 
very moment of victory, translated through martyrdom to 
a seat in history beside our first Washington himself; I 
ask you, where is a record like unto this in our modern 
annals ? Yet to the last, and through all his wondrous 
steps of exaltation, he is the same plain, modest, homely, 
simple-hearted Abraham Lincoln who hewed out rails in 
an Illinois forest, and " sorted " farmers' letters in a rustic 
post-office. Since the day when a Corsican lieutenant of 
artillery presided over a congress of conquered kings at 
Tilsit, history has recorded no such extraordinary eleva- 
tion. Napoleon grew dizzy ; but honest Lincoln's head 
never lost its balance. Lifted into the gaze of all Chris- 
tendom, his calm spirit reposed in a majestic serenity ; for 
he felt that the Hand that raised him thither, held him 
there with an infinite grasp until the Divine purpose was 
accomplished. Suppose that, when the coarsely clad boat- 
man of Illinois was floating down the Mississippi in his 
rude craft, some prophetic angel had tolcl him that he would 
yet make that river the scene of prodigious exploits, of which 
he should be the prime controller, and would one day 
sweep from all that river's bank the gigantic system of 
human bondage, would he not have smiled at the bare 
thought as the dream of an enchanter 1 Yet the dream 
was fulfilled. To Joseph's sheaf all the other sheaves 
made obeisance. I count it as an especial mercy that, 
through all his career, God blessed our Abraham with 



CUYLER. 165 

true humility ; and kept him as free from selfish ambitions 
as the lowliest sentinel who ever paced his solitary rounds 
on a rampart. 

Secondly, God blessed our good President with more 
than an unselfish heart ; He gave him a clear and vigorous 
head and a most marvellous sagacity. It has been too 
common to speak of Mr. Lincoln as merely a good, honest 
man, whom the " accidents " of politics made conspicu- 
ous — a man who merely drifted on a current of events 
that he was powerless to control. Such will not be the 
verdict of posterity. The next generation will acknow- 
ledge that the man who rose from a log cabin to the 
Presidential chair — who led a vast republic through its 
wilderness of perilous confusions, and its Red Sea of 
horrible carnage, with a patience that never gave way, a 
faith that never faltered, and a sagacity that made never 
a serious mistake, was a man who has no superior in the 
American annals. I predict that, fifty years hence, the 
foremost name in American history will be the name that 
was signed to the Edict of Emancipation. Napoleon's 
test of ability was a very simple one — "Who did all 
that % " We apply this test to our departed President, 
and ask — who has achieved more than Lincoln ? who did 
his life-work better than he ? The backwoodsman of 
Illinois did not lay claim to Hamilton's imperial intellect, 
yet Hamilton never read events more sagaciously. He 
did not claim John Jay's profound wisdom, yet Jay never 
decided more wisely. He did not pretend to Daniel 
Webster's massive and magnificent oratory ; but Webster 
never put more truth into a portable form for the common 
people. Lincoln's speech in the Cooper Institute of New 



166 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

York, in 1859, was a master-piece of clear trenchant 
argumentation. With him, common sense did the work 
of genius. He clove at once to the root of the matter. 
Some of his homely sayings will live alongside of Benja- 
min Franklin's. His pleasant jokes had more meaning in 
them than many another man's pompous harangues. 

For example, when Mr. Lincoln wrote to a Kentucky 
friend these simple words " if slavery is not wrong, then 
nothing is wrong," he answered in one sentence all the 
detestable logic of Thornwell and Calhoun. When he 
said in 1858, " it is impossible for this Union to exist, 
one-half slave, and the other half free," he announced a 
truth which previous statesmen had either failed to 
perceive or else failed to utter. His brief address on the 
battle-ground of Gettysburgh is sublime in its pathos. 
His last memorable i( Inaugural " will take its place 
beside the Farewell Address of Washington. The carping 
London Times did not dare to sneer at that. When I read 
it on the street in a daily journal, I said to myself, " God 
be praised for a President who can utter God's Word 
from a Presidential chair ! " There are few finer passages 
in the English language than this oft-quoted sentence, so 
sonorous in its roll, and so severely true in its portent. 
" If it is the will of God that this war continue until all 
the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty 
years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every 
drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be repaid by 
another drawn by the sword, then, as was said three 
thousand years ago, so still it must be said, that the 
judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." 

Scoffers at home and secessionists abroad have been wont 



CUYLEK. 167 

to flout at Mr. Lincoln as a "jester," a "clown" and a 
"buffoon." As well denounce Washington as a cynic be- 
cause he seldom laughed. Lincoln's humor was as natural 
to him as breathing. It was a happy gift. It kept his 
temper sweet, and lubricated his mind, that might other- 
wise have been worn into sulleness or into despondency 
by the tremen.. is friction of care and overwhelming 
anxieties. None of his jokes were ill-timed or malevolent. 
Some of them were exceedingly adroit. For instance, 
when an inquisitive visitor questioned him too closely as 
to the destination of the Burnside expedition, the Presi- 
dent inquired with mock gravity, "my friend, can you 
keep a secret ? " " Yes, Sir," he eagerly rej^lied. " Then," 
said Mr. Lincoln, " I will venture to inform you that the 
expedition has gone to sea." 

The shrewd sense that made this ready answer was the 
same shrewd sense that dictated every Presidential message, 
that aimed the emancipation-edict at slavery's guilty head, 
and guided his every footstep along the dark dangerous 
way that duty commanded him to tread. I do not claim 
for our beloved President a profoundly philosophical mind. 
I do not claim for him brilliant genius. But I do claim 
that when the Almighty made Abraham Lincoln for this 
great national crisis, He did not make a mistake. 

III. Let us look now a moment at another blessing w T hich 
God gave to our beloved and martyred ruler. Beneath 
that manly head He gave him a woman's heart. Did 
you ever hear that our Father Abraham ever spoke a 
harsh word to one of his children ? Did you ever see his 
now dead hands stained with cruelty % With almost 
unlimited powder entrusted to him, did he ever play " the 



168 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

tyrant % " He loved everybody, and wanted everybody to 
love him. Nobody was afraid of him — except rogues and 
traitors, and be was too lenient even toward them. The 
humblest "blue-jacket" that entered the White House 
was sure of a hearty grasp of that open honest hand, and 
if the soldier's child came along, the tall ungainly form 
would lift it up for a kiss. He never could stand a 
woman's tears ; they were almost certain to melt down a 
death-sentence into a pardon. His last act was one of 
clemency to a notorious traitor ; if he had lived, he was 
in more danger of surrendering to rebel prayers than he 
ever was of surrendering to rebel swords. 

All the common people had felt of Lincoln's heart, and 
they loved him. His political foes were his personal 
friends : " he is a kind honest man after all " was the con- 
fession that followed even the bitterest assault upon his 
public policy. The popular names given to great men 
are a clue to the popular estimate of their characters. 
We once had a resolute piece of stuff in the Presidential 
chair whom the people styled " Old Hickory." We had 
an " Old Tippecanoe " — so named from his principal 
battle ; we called another gallant veteran " Hough and 
Heady." But this plain homespun kind-voiced President 
was so near to every one of us — so like our own relative 
that we were wont to call him " Uncle Abe " and " Father 
Abraham." There was no disrespect in this ; but rather 
a respect so deep and honest that it could afford to be 
familiar. 

Hid this abounding kindness of heart ever warp his 
sense of right, and lead him to compromise his principles % 
This was his danger, but I think that in the main he 



CUTLER. 169 

avoided it. Not for a moment did he yield to the false 
counsels of the treacherous, the bribes of the corrupt, or 
the weak fears of the desponding. Abraham Lincoln's 
religion, as far as the world saw it — lay in two cardinal 
principles — a rigid sense of right — and an unfaltering 
faith in the Providence of God. He was a child of Prov- 
idence. " If I did not seek help from God every morning 
I could not stand up under the load laid upon me," was 
the substance of a remark made to an intimate friend 
during a gloomy period of the war. What was the degree 
of our President's heart-faith in Jesus Christ is known only 
to the Omniscient. He worshiped in G©d's sanctuary; 
he once taught in the Sabbath School ; he was rigidly 
moral ; he practised abstinence from the wine-cup as well 
preached it ; he set a noble example of industry, conti- 
nence, fortitude and integrity. He never made any public 
confession of his faith in the Redeemer. This I regret 
from my inmost heart. Would to God that the lofty 
philanthrophy which made him our Wilberforce, had also 
been coupled with Wilberforce's devout, tender and 
fervid piety ! Praises be rendered too unto God for the 
faith in an overruling Providence which dwelt in Lincoln's 
great kindly heart ; and for the beautiful law of right 
which guided his glorious career! Never had a public 
man a -harder path to tread ; but he never lost his way — 
for he simply and steadily kept to the straight road. After 
issuing the proclamation of freedom he said to a friend, 
" I did not think the people had been educated up to it ; 
but I thought it ivas right to* issue it, and so I did it." 

And now that great, generous child-like heart has ceased 
to throb ! Those deep, melancholy eyes — deep wells of 



170 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

sorrow as they always looked to me — are dimmed forever. 
Those gaunt -ungainly limbs with which he strode along 
his patient way under the burthen, are laid to rest. The 
hand that broke four million of fetters is lifeless clay ! 
Lincoln in his coffin has put a world in tears. Never 
was a man so mourned ; never before did all Christendom 
stand mourners around one single bier. That pistol-shot 
at Washington echoes round the world in the universal 
wail of humanity. God pity our noble friends abroad 
when they hear the tidings! Kossuth will weep as he 
wept for the lost crown of Maria Theresa. John Bright's 
heart will bleed as it bled but yesterday over the grave 
of Cobden. Garibaldi will clasp that little grandson to 
his bosom with a tenderer love, that the child bears the 
name of " Abraham Lincoln." Our missionaries in Syria 
and China and the Pacific Isles will drop warm tears on 
the pages of those Bibles that they are rendering into 
heathen tongues. Here at home I see the sorrow in every 
eye ; the air is heavy with the grief; " there is not a house 
in which there is not one dead." 

Intense as is our grief, who shall fathom the sorrow of 
those to whom he brought the boon of freedom, when 
they shall learn of the death of their liberator ? What 
wails shall mingle with the voices of the sea along Caro- 
lina's shore ! Miriam's timbrel in a moment drowned in 
Rachel's cry of anguish ! 

Last Saturday morning I addressed one thousand freed 
men's children in the doomed city of Charleston. When 
I said to them, " May I invite for you your father Lin- 
coln to come to Charleston and see the little folks he has 
made free?" a thousand black hands flew up with a shout. 
Alas ! at that moment a silent corpse lay in the East Room 



CUTLER. 171 

at Washington. On reaching Fortress Monroe, — under 
the first stunning blow of the awful tidings, I went aside 
to a group of poor negro women who were gathered about 
a huckster's table, which was hang with a few coarse strips 
of black muslin. "Well, friends, the good man is gone." 
" Yes, sah," spake out a gray-haired Aunt Chloe — " yes, 
sah ! Linkum's dead ! They killed our best friend. But 
God be libin yet. Dey can't kill Him. I'se sure of dat !" 
How instinctively the childish faith of those long-suffering 
hearts reached up to the Almighty arm ! In that poor 
freedwoman's broken ejaculation, " Linkum dead — but 
God still libin," I find the only solace for your smitten 
heart and mine. 

Did Lincoln die too soon ? For us and for the world 
he did ; but not for himself. It is all sadly right. God's 
will be done ! The time had come when, like Samson, 
our beloved leader could slay more by his death than in 
his life. He has slain the accursed spirit of slavery yet 
lurking in the North. He has slain the last vestige of 
sympathy with the discomfited rebellion in every candid 
foreign mind. That pistol's flash has revealed the slave- 
drivers' conspiracy to the world — 

"Not only doomed, but damned." 

Our father died at the right time ; for his mighty work 
was done. He lived to see the rebellion in its last apv>nies : 
he lived to enter Richmond amid the acclamations of the 
liberated slave, and to sit down in the arch-traitor's deserted 
seat ; he lived until Sumter's flag rose again like a star of 
Bethlehem in the southern sky, and then, with the mar- 
tyr's crown upon his brow, and with four million broken 
fetters in his hand, he went up to meet his God. In a 



172 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

moment his life crystallizes into the pure white fame that 
belongs only to the martyr for truth and liberty ! Terri- 
ble as seems the method of his death to us to-day, it was 
after all the most fitting and glorious. He fell by the 
hand of the same iniquity that slew Lyon and Shaw, and 
Sedgwick and Rice, and Wadsworth and McPherson. In 
God's sight Lincoln was no more precious than the hum- 
blest drummer-boy who has bled away his young life on 
the sod of Gettysburgh or Chattanooga. He had called 
on two hundred thousand heroes to lay down their lives 
for their country ; and now he too has gone to make his 
grave beside them. 

" So sleep the brave who sink to rest 
By all their country's wishes blest." 

When that grave that now opens for its illustrious vic- 
tim on yonder western prairie shall finally yield up its 
dead, glorious will be his resurrection ! Methinks that I 
behold the spirit of the great Liberator in that judgment 
scene before the assembled hosts of heaven. Around him 
are the tens of thousands from whom he struck the op- 
pressor's chain. Methinks I hear their grateful voices ex- 
claim, "we were an hungered, and thou gavest us the 
bread of truth ; we were thirsty for liberty, and thou 
gavest us drink ; we were strangers, and thou didst take 
us in ; we were sick with two centuries of sorrow, and 
thou didst -visit us ; we were in the prison-house of bond- 
age and thou earnest unto us." And the King shall say 
unto him, " inasmuch as thou hast done it unto one of 
the least of these my brethren, thou hast done it unto me. 
Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy 
of thy Lord." 



SERMON X. 



EEV. JOSEPH P. THOMPSON, D. D. 



The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, He that raleth 
over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be as the 
light of the morning when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds ; 
as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain.* — 
II Samuel xxiii. 3, 4. 

I count it one of the noblest acts in the history of the 
race, an impressive proof of the progress of human society, 
that a nation has rendered its spontaneous homage, — a 
tribute without precedent in its own annals, and hardly 
equaled in the annals of the world, — to a man whom it 
had not yet learned to call great. It teaches us that there 
is something greater than greatness itself. l$o inspiration 
of genius had enrolled him among the few great names of 
literature ; no feats of arms nor strategy upon the field, 
had given him a place among military heroes ; no contri- 
bution to the science of government, no opportunity of 
framing a new civil polity for mankind, had raised him to 
the rank of publicists, of philosophers, or of founders of 
states. Great he was in his own way, and of a true and 
rare type of greatness — the less recognized and acknow- 
ledged the more it is genuine and divine ; — but the people 
had not begun to accord to him the epithets and the 

♦Preached in the Broadway Tabernacle Church, April 30th, 1865. 



174 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

homage of greatness, nor is the loss of a great man to the 
world the chief calamity in his death. Not greatness bnt 
grandeur is the fitting epithet for the life and character of 
Abraham Lincoln ; not greatness of endowment nor of 
achievement, but grandeur of soul. Grand in his sim- 
plicity and kindliness ; grand in his wisdom of resolve and 
his integrity of purpose ; grand in his trust in principle 
and in the principles he made his trust; grand in his 
devotion to truth, to duty, and to right; grand in his 
consecration to his country and to God, he rises above the 
great in genius and in renown, into that foremost rank of 
moral heroes, of whom the world was not worthy. 

Had the pen of prophecy been commissioned to delineate 
his character and administration, it must have chosen the 
very words of my text ; "just," so that his integrity had 
passed into a proverb ; " ruling in the fear of God," with 
a religious reverence, humility and faith marking his 
private life and his public acts and utterances ; bright as 
" the light of the morning," with native cheerfulness and 
the serenity of hope ; and with a wisdom that revealed 
itself as " the clear shining after rain ; " and gentle withal 
" as the tender grass springing out of the earth ;" — such 
was the Euler, whose death the Nation mourns. 

He hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been 
So clear in his great office, that his virtues 
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against 
The deep damnation of his taking-off : 
And Pity — like heaveu's cherubim, horsed 
Upon the sightless couriers of the air — 
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, 
That tears shall drown the wind. 



THOMPSON. 175 

The life of Abraham Lincoln, the life by which he has 
been known to the people, and will be known in history, 
covers less than live years from the day of his nomination 
at Chicago to the day of his assassination at Washington. 
Before this brief period, though he had been in posts of 
public life at intervals during thirty years, and had 
gained a reputation as a clear and forcible political 
debater, evincing also a comprehensive faculty for states- 
manship, he had done nothing, said nothing, written 
nothing that would have given him a place in history or 
have caused him to be long remembered beyond the 
borders of his adopted State. And yet for that brief 
historical life which is now incorporated imperishably 
with the annals of the American Republic, and shall be 
woven into the history of the world while human language 
shall remain, he was unconsciously preparing during fifty 
years of patient toil and discipline. 

Those seven years of poverty and obscurity in Kentucky, 
in which he never saw a church or a school-house, when 
he learned to read at the log-cabin of a neighbor, and 
learned to pray at his mother's knees ; those thirteen years 
of labor and solitude in the primeval forests of Southern 
Indiana, when the axe, the plow, and the rifle trained him 
to manly toil and independence ; when the Bible, Pil- 
grim's Progress, and JEsop's Fables, his only library, read 
by the light of the evening fire, disciplined his intellectual 
and moral faculties, and a borrowed copy of " Weems' Life 
of Washington " acquainted him with the Father of his 
Country ; and when the Angel of Death sealed and 
sanctified the lessons of her who taught him to be true 
and pure and noble, and to walk uprightly in the fear of 



176 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 



• 



God ; that season of adventure in the rough and perilous 
navigation of the Mississippi, when the vast extent of his 
country, and the varieties of its products and its popula- 
tion, were spread out before his opening manhood; the 
removal to the fat bottom-lands of the Sangamon, in the 
just rising State of Illinois; his further discipline in 
farming, fencing, rafting, shop-keeping, while feeling his 
way towards his vocation in life ; his patient self-culture 
by studious habits under limited opportunities ; Iris 
observation of the two phases of emigration, Northern and 
Southern, that moved over the prairies side by side, along 
different parallels, without mingling ; his brief but arduous 
campaign in the Black Hawk War ; his studies in law and 
politics, and his practical acquaintance with political and 
professional life ; — all this diverse and unmethodical disci- 
pline and experience was his unconscious preparation for 
leading the nation in the most dark, critical and perilous 
period of its history. 

Abraham Lincoln was a " self-made man ; " but in just 
the sense in which any man of marked individuality is 
self-made. So far was he from affecting superiority to 
academic culture or independence of the schools, that it 
may be said of him as of his great counterpart in charac- 
ter, in aims,, and in influence, the plebeian sovereign of 
England, Richard Cobden, that while he was " a statesman 
by instinct," and was calmly self-reliant upon any question 
that he had studied or any principle that he had mastered, 
he always deferred greatly to those whose opportunities 
of information and means of culture had been better than 
his own. The true scholar is " self-made ; " for he is a 
scholar only so far as he has digested the works of others 



THOMPSON. V* 



I I 



by his own processes of thought, and has assimilated the 
treasures of learning into the independent operations of 
his own mind. Whether his books or his teachers be few 
or many, whether his education be in professional schools 
or in the open school of Xature and of practical life, he 
who would become a power either in the world of opinion 
or in the world of action, must make himself a man of 
self-discipline and culture with such helps as are at his 
command. Mr. Lincoln made himself, not by despising 
advantages which he had not, but by using thoroughly 
such advantages as he had. He did not boast his humble 
origin nor the deficiencies of his early education as a title 
to popular favor, nor use these as a back-ground to render 
the more conspicuous his native genius or the distinction 
which he had achieved ; but while he never forgot his 
birth, nor repudiated his flat-boat and his rails, nor 
divorced himself from the "plain people," he yet recog- 
nized the value of refinement in manners, and cultivated 
the highest refinement of feeling. When Mr. Douglas 
had recourse to personalities in political debate, Mr. 
Lincoln in his rejoinder said, " I set out, in this campaign, 
with the intention of conducting it strictly as a gentleman, 
in substance at least, if not in the outside polish. The 
latter I shall never be, but that which constitutes the 
inside of a gentleman I hope I understand, and am not 
less inclined to practice than others. It was my purpose 
and expectation that this canvass would be conducted 
upon principle, and with fairness on both sides, and it 
shall not be my fault if this purpose and expectation are 
given up."" This self-made man, recognizing his lack of 
* Speech at Springfield, 111., July 17, 1858. 



1 * 



78 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

courtly breeding, so far from affecting indifference to 
good manners, studied to practice the truest gentility of 
speech and of feeling. Born in the cabin, reared in the 
forest, a hardy son of toil, whose early associations were 
with the rougher and coarser phases of life, he made 
himself a gentleman without even the " petty vices " that 
sometimes discredit the name ; and when raised to the 
highest social position, proved that the heart is the best 
teacher of gentility. Never despising a good thing which 
he had not, he made always the best use of that which he 
had. 

He himself has told how resolutely and thoroughly he 
sought to discipline his mind, in later life, by studies and 
helps of which he was deprived in youth. " In the course 
of my law-reading," said Mr. Lincoln to a friend,* " I 
constantly came upon the word demonstrate, and I asked 
myself, what do I do when I demonstrate, more than when 
I reason or prove — what is the certainty called demonstra- 
tion ? Having consulted dictionaries and books of reference 
to little purpose, I said to myself, ' Lincoln, you can never 
make a lawyer if you do not understand what demonstrate 
means.' I had never had but six months' schooling in my 
life ; but now I left my place in Springfield, and went 
home to my father's, and stayed there till I could give any 
proposition of the six books of Euclid at sight." Thus, 
at twenty-five years of age, Abraham Lincoln paid his 
honest tribute to that very means of mental discipline 
which experience has placed at the foundation of a college 
course. He " made himself," by using the same methods 
of training that Daniel Webster used as a student at Dart- 
* Rev. J. P. Gulliver, Norwich, Conn. 



THOMPSON. 179 

mouth, and Edward Everett at Cambridge ; and having 
determined upon the profession of law, he fenced in his 
mind to book-study with the same energy and resolution 
with which he had once split 3000 rails to fence in the 
fields for tilling. There is no royal road to learning, and 
Mr. Lincoln's success demonstrates anew the law that 
persevering labor conquers every obstacle. He did his 
utmost to repair the deficiencies of his youth in the only 
way in which they could be remedied, and by that con- 
quest over his own mind, which was the key to all other 
victories, he showed himself a man. But for this, his 
mind would have remained a broad unfenced prairie, and 
he but a pioneer squatter, making no improvements, or at 
best a surveyor, staking out some general boundaries of 
knowledge, but having no proper sense of ownership in 
the tract, or in the treasures that lay hidden beneath its 
surface. 

I have thus sought to redeem from perversion that 
much-abused term "the self-made man." None can quote 
Abraham Lincoln in justification of boorishness, of illiter- 
ateness, of opinionativeness, of uppishness, as prerogatives 
of a self-made man ; nor can his name and life be used 
as in any sense an argument against that culture of so- 
ciety and of the schools, of which he scarcely knew, until 
he had attained his majority. The unconscious plan of 
his life was none the less apian of that Divine mind whose 
constant guidance he owned ; and his first fifty years were 
a training-school of Providence for the five that constitute 
his historical life. 

An analysis of the mental and the moral traits of Mr. 
Lincoln, will show us how complete was his adaptation for 



180 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

that very period of our national history which he was 
called to fill, and which he has made so peculiarly his own. 

I. — His mental processes were characterized by origin- 
ality, clearness, comprehensiveness, sagacity, logical fitness, 
acumen and strength. He was an original thinker : — not 
in the sense of always having new and striking ideas, — 
for such originality may be as daring and dangerous as it 
is peculiar and rare; — but he was original in that his ideas 
were in some characteristic way his own. However com- 
mon to other minds, however simple and axiomatic when 
stated, they bore the stamp of individuality. Not a mes- 
sage or proclamation did he write, not a letter did he pen, 
which did not carry upon the face of it, " Abraham Lincoln" 
his mark. He thought out every subject for himself; and 
he did not commit hfmself in public upon any subject 
which he had not made his own by reflection. Hence 
even familiar thoughts, coming before us in the simple 
rustic garb of his homely speech, seemed fresh and new. 
He took from the mint of political science the bullion 
which philosophers had there deposited, and coined it into 
proverbs for the people. Or in the great placer of political 
speculations, he sometimes struck a lode of genuine metal, 
and wrought it with his own hands. 

" The Union is older than the Constitution ;" " The 
Union made the Constitution, and not the Constitution 
5the Union ;" " Can aliens make treaties easier than friends 
can make laws?" "The states have their status in the 
Union, and they have no other legal status;" "Capital is 
the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor 
had not first existed ;" " In giving freedom to the slave, we 
assv re freedom to the free;" "Often a limb must beam- 



THOMPSON. 1 81 

pntated to save a life ; but a life is never wisely given to 
save a limb ;" — what volumes of philosophy, of history, 
of political economy, of legal and ethical science are con- 
densed in these pithy sentences, each bearing the -mark 
of Mr. Lincoln's individuality. Much of this individuality 
of thought was due to the seclusion of his early life from 
books and schools, and to the meditative habit induced by 
the solitude of the forest. 

To the same quality, and partly to the sarn£ cause, may 
be ascribed the clearness of his mental processes. Com- 
pelled in childhood to find out by observation, by expe- 
rience, by meditative analysis, knowledge in which he had 
no teacher, and for lack of external aids, thrown back 
habitually upon his own thoughts, he knew always the 
conclusions he had reached, and the process by which he 
reached them. If he must plunge into the depth of the 
forest, he took care* to trace his path by blazing the trees 
with his mark ; and if sometimes he seemed slow in emerg- 
ing from the wilderness, it was because, when a boy, he 
had learned not to halloo till he was out of the woods. 
Deliberation and caution were qualities in which he was 
trained, when compelled to hew out a clearing for a home 
within sound of wild beasts and of savage men ; — but be- 
cause of these very qualities, lie knew always where he 
stood, and how he came there. That communion with 
nature which has taught Bryant such clear, terse, fitting 
words in rhythm with her harmonies, taught Abraham 
Lincoln clear, strong thoughts, whose worth he knew, be- 
cause he had earned them by his own toil. 

I am not here dealing in conjecture. His own narra- 
tive, already quoted, as he gave it familiarly to a clergy- 



182 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

man of Connecticut, informs ns that, when a boy, he used 
to get irritated when any body talked to him in a way 
that he could not understand, " I don't think I ever got 
angry at any thing else in my life ; but that always dis- 
turbed my temper, and has ever since." Often after hear- 
ing the neighbors talk in his father's house upon subjects 
he did not comprehend, he would walk up and down his 
room half the night, trying to make out the exact mean- 
ing of them " dark sayings." When once upon such a 
hunt after an idea, he could not sleep till he had caught 
it, and then he would " repeat it over and over, and put it 
in language plain enough for any boy to understand." 
This simplifying of thought was a passion with him ; and 
in his own pithy words, " I was never easy until I had a 
thought bounded on the North, and bounded on the South, 
and bounded on the East, and bounded on the West." 

How much the American people will hereafter owe to 
him for having staked, out the boundaries of political ideas 
hitherto but vaguely comprehended. How conclusive 
against the right of secession is this clearly-bounded state- 
ment of the first Inaugural: "I hold that in the contem- 
plation of universal law, and of the Constitution, the 
Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, 
if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national 
governments. It is safe to assert that no government pro- 
per ever had a provision in its own organic law for its own 
termination. Continue to execute all the express provi- 
sions of our National Constitution, and the Union will 
endure for ever, it being impossible to destroy it, except 
by some action not provided for in the instrument itself." 

The opening sentence of his Springfield speech, June 



THOMPSON. 183 

17, 1858, which was the foundation of his great debate 
with Douglas, bounded the question of nationalizing slav- 
ery so clearly and sharply, that Mr. Lincoln had only to 
repeat that statement, from time to time, to clinch every 
argument of every speech. "A house divided against it- 
self cannot stand. I believe this government cannot en- 
dure permanently half slave and half free. I do not ex- 
pect the Union to be dissolved, I do not expect the house 
to fall,— •but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It 
will become all one thing, or all the other." Mr. Doug- 
las' policy was fast making it "all one thing"; Mr. Lin- 
coln lived to make it, and to see it, " all the other !" 

Imagination and a poetic sensibility were not wanting 
in a soul that could conceive the last inaugural, or could 
indite the closing sentence of the first : — " The mystic 
chords of memory stretching from every battle-field and 
patriot's grave to every living heart and hearthstone all 
over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the 
Union, when again touched, as surely they will be by the 
better angels of our nature." — He was an ardent admirer 
of Burns, and a discriminating student of Shakspeare. 

Enthusiasm was not lacking in a mind that, in the midst 
of a wasting civil war, could prophesy, " There are already 
those among us who, if the Union be preserved, will live 
to see it contain two hundred and fifty millions. The 
struggle of to-day is not altogether for to-day ; it is for a 
vast future also. But neither enthusiasm nor imagination 
ever mastered that calm, clear judgment, trained to a 
cautious self-reliance by the early discipline of the forest 
school. 

Comprehensiveness was equally characteristic of Mr. 



184 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

Lincoln's views, upon questions where breadth was as im- 
portant as clearness of vision. Those who have had 
occasion to consult with him upon public affairs have 
often remarked, that even in the course of protracted and 
able deliberations, there would arise no aspect of the ques- 
tion which had not already occurred to the mind of the 
President, and been allowed its weight in forming his 
opinion. His judgment was round-a-bout, encompassing 
the subject upon every side ; it was circumspect, attend- 
ing to all the circumstances of the case, and patiently in- 
vestigating its minutiae. He would not approve the find- 
ing of a court-martial without reading over carefully the 
details of the evidence and hearing the pleas of the con- 
demned and his friends ; and this conscientious legal and 
judicial habit, applied to questions of state policy, gave 
to his views a breadth and solidity beyond the grasp of 
the mere speculative politician. Hence came that reputa- 
tion for sagacity and insight, which grew with our obser- 
vation of the man, and with the unfolding of events rati- 
fying his judgment. How often, where his seeming hes- 
itancy had tried our patience, have we come to see that he 
had surveyed the whole question, had anticipated what 
lay beyond, and was biding his time. His studied silence 
touching his own intentions, in his replies to speeches of 
welcoine along the route from Springfield to Washington 
in 1861, was dictated by this comprehensive wisdom. At 
every point he baffled curiosity and rebuked impatience, 
by avowing his determination not to speak at all upon 
public questions until he could speak advisedly. " I deem 
it just to you, to myself, and to all, that I should see every- 
thing, that I should hear everything, that I should have 



THOMPSON. 185 

every light that can be brought within my reach, in order 
that when I do speak I shall have enjoyed every opportu- 
nity to take correct and true grounds ; and for this reason 
I don't propose to speak at this time of the policy of the 
government."* This was not the evasiveness of the poli- 
tician, but the wise reserve of the statesman. 

He maintained the same reticence upon the difficult 
problem of reorganization, which was the burden of his 
latest public utterance, after the fall of Richmond. His 
adroit substitution of a story or a witticism for a formal 
speech, at times when his words were watched and weighed, 
was but another illustration of this practical sagacity. And 
when the secret history of the dark periods of the war 
shall be disclosed, Mr. Lincoln will stand justified before 
the world, alike for his reticence while waiting for light, 
and for a policy guided by an almost prophetic insight, 
when by patient waiting he had gained clearness and com- 
prehensiveness of view. 

The mental processes of Mr. Lincoln were characterized, 
moreover, by a logical fitness, keenness, and strength. 
Not for naught did he master the science of demonstration. 
His speeches are a catena of propositions and proofs that 
bind the mind to his conclusions as soon as his premises 
are conceded. In his great debate with Mr. Douglas, — 
a debate accompanied with all the excitements of a politi- 
cal canvass, and in which he was called upon to reply to 
his opponent in the hearing of eager thousands, — it is 
remarkable that he never had occasion to retract) r even 
to qualify any of his positions ; that he never contradicted 
himself, nor abandoned an argument that he had once 

* Speech to the Legislature of New York. 



186 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

assumed. His caution and circumspection led him to 
choose his words, and to state only that which he could 
maintain. His clear and comprehensive survey of his 
subject made him the master of his own position ; and his 
calm, strong logic and his keen power of dissection made 
him a formidable antagonist. He who had such force of 
resolution that, in full manhood, after he had been a mem- 
ber of the State Legislature, he could go to school to Eu- 
clid to learn how to demonstrate, was likely to reason to 
some purpose when he had laid down his propositions. 

But it was mainly his adherence to ethical principles in 
political discussions that gave such point and force to his 
reasoning ; for no politician of this generation has applied 
Christian ethics to questions of public policy with more 
of honesty, of consistency, or of downright earnestness. 
Standing in the old Independence Hall at Philadelphia, 
he said, " All the political sentiments I entertain have 
been drawn, so far as I have been able to draw them, from 
the sentiments which originated in and were given to the 
world from this hall. I have never had a feeling, politi- 
cally, that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in 
the Declaration of Independence."* But the sentiments 
of the Declaration which Mr. Lincoln emphasized are not 
simply political ideas — they are ethical principles. That 
" all men are created equal ; that they are endowed by 
their Creator with certain inalienable rights ; that among 
these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," — 
these are principles of natural ethics, sustained by the 
august sanctions of that God who is no " respecter of 
persons." And it was as truths of moral obligation that 

* Speech of 21st February, 1861. 



THOMPSON. 187 

Abraham Lincoln adopted them as the rule of his political 
faith. He entered into public life, thirty years ago, with 
the distinct avowal of the doctrine whose final ratification 
by the people he has sealed with his blood — that " the 
institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad 
policy."* His whole life was true to that conviction. His 
great campaign for the senatorship in 1858, was conducted 
throughout upon moral grounds. " I confess myself as 
belonging to that class in the country, who contemplate 
slavery as a moral, social, and political evil, having due 
regard for its actual existence amongst us and the difficul- 
ties of getting rid of it in any satisfactory way, and to all 
the constitutional obligations which have been thrown 
about it ; but, nevertheless, desire a policy that looks to 
the prevention of it as a wrong, and looks hopefully to 
the time when, as a wrong, it may come to an end."f 
# * * « jf slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." J 
" One only thing," said he in his speech at Cooper In- 
stitute, " will satisfy our opponents. Cease to call slavery 
wrong, and join them in calling it right. If our sense of 
duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly 
and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those so- 
phistical contrivances, wherewith we are so industriously 
plied and belabored— contrivances such as groping for 
some middle ground between the right and the wrong, 
vain as the search for a man who should be neither a liv- 
ing nor a dead man — such as a policy of ' don't care,' on 
a question about which all true men do care — such as 

* Protest in Illinois House of Representatives, March 3, 183 T. 

f Speech at Galesburgh, Oct. 7, 1858. 

% Letter to A. G. Hodges, Esq., of Kentucky. 



188 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

Union appeals, beseeching true Union men to yield to 
Disnnionists, reversing the Divine rule, and calling, not 
the sinners, but the righteous, to repentance — such as in- 
vocations of Washington, imploring men to nnsay what 
Washington said, and undo what Washington did. Nei- 
ther let ns be slandered from our duty by false accusations 
against ns, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruc- 
tion to the Government, nor of dungeons to ourselves. 
Let ns have faith that right makes might ; and in that 
faith, let ns to the end, dare to do our duty, as we under- 
stand it." 

Mr. Lincoln's logic was pointed with wit, and his ethi- 
cal reasoning was often set home by a pithy story. The 
reputation of a story-teller and a jester was turned by his 
opponents to his disparagement ; but his stories were 
philosophy in parables, and his jests were morals. If 
sometimes they smacked of humble life, this was due not 
to his tastes bnt ' to his early associations. His wit was 
always used with point and purpose ; for the boy who 
committed all Esop's fables to memory had learned too. 
well the nse of story and parable to forego that keen 
weapon in political argument. The whole people took 
his witty cantion "not to swop horses in the middle of 
the stream." 

The base-born plea that social amalgamation would fol- 
low the emancipation of the negro, he met by a rare 
stroke of wit. " I do not understand that because I do 
not want a negro woman for a slave, I mnst necessarily 
want her for a wife. My understanding is that I can just 
let her alone. I am now in my fiftieth year, and I cer- 
tainly never have had a black woman for either a slave or 



THOMPSON. 189 

a wife. So it seems to me quite possible for us to get 
along without making either slaves or wives of negroes. 
I recollect but one distinguished advocate of the perfect 
equality of the races, and that is Judge Douglas's old 
friend, Col. Richard M. Johnson."* 

Yet Mr. Lincoln's wit was never malicious nor rudely 
personal.. Once when Mr. Douglas had attempted to 
parry an argument by impeaching the veracity of a Sen- 
ator whom Mr. Lincoln had quoted, he answered that the 
question was not one of veracity, but simply one of argu- 
ment. " By a course of reasoning, Euclid proves that all 
the angles in a triangle are equal to two right angles. 
Now if you undertake to disprove that proposition, would 
you prove it to be false by calling Euclid a liar ?"f 

II. — Passing from the* intellectual traits of Mr. Lincoln 
to his moral qualities, we find in these the same providen- 
tial preparation for Iris work, through long years of hardy 
training. He was of a meek and a patient spirit — both 
prime elements in a strong character. It might almost be 
said of him as it was said of Moses, that " he was meek 
above all the men which were upon the face of the earth." 
The early discipline of poverty, toil, and sorrow, accom- 
panied with maternal lessons of submission to God, had 
taught him to labor and to wait in the patience of hope. 
It was a household saying of his mother, when times 
were hard and days were dark, " It isn't best to borrow 
too much trouble. We must have faith in God." And so 
Abraham learned that "it is good for a man that he bear 
the yoke in his youth ; and it is good that a man should 

* Speech at Columbus, February, 1859. 

f Speech at Charleston, September 18, 1858. 



190 DEATH OF PEESIDENT LINCOLN. 

both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord." 
And when the yoke of a nation's burdens and sorrows 
was laid upon his shoulders, his gentle, patient spirit ac- 
cepted it without faltering and without repining. He 
did not borrow too much trouble, but had faith in God. 
Neither the violence of enemies nor the impatience and 
distrust of friends could irritate him ; neither the threats 
of traitors nor the zeal of partisans could disturb his 
equanimity, or urge him faster than Providence, speaking 
through the logic of events, would seem to lead him. 
" Thy gentleness," said the Psalmist, " hath made me 
great." And a certain divine gentleness had possessed 
and fortified the soul of Abraham Lincoln. 

Cheerfulness was with him a moral quality, as well as 
the native cast of his temperament. It sprang from the 
consciousness of sincerity, from good-will toward men, 
and from habitual trust in God. His playful humor 
sometimes belied him ; since no man was farther removed 
from levity and frivolity of mind. A thoughtful earnest- 
ness pervaded his being — an earnestness that sometimes 
verged upon sadness, yet never sank into moroseness. It 
was a cheerful earnestness; and while cheerfulness was 
the tone of his temperament, he cultivated this quality 
for the relief of his own mind, and for the stimulation of 
others against despondency. I shall ever cherish among 
the brightest memories of life, an hour in his working- 
room last September, which was one broad sheet of sun- 
shine. He had spent the morning poring over the returns 
of a court-martial upon capital cases, and studying to 
decide them according to truth ; and upon the entrance 
of a friend, he threw himself into an attitude of relaxa- 



THOMPSON. . 191 

tion, and sparkled with good humor. I will not repeat, 
lest they should be misconstrued, his trenchant witticisms 
upon political topics now gone by ; yet one of these can 
wound no living patriot. I spoke of the rapid rise of 
Union feeling since the promulgation of the Chicago 
platform and the victory at Atlanta ; and the question 
was started, which had contributed the most to the reviv- 
ing of Union sentiment — the victory or the platform. 
"I guess," said the President, "it was the victory; at 
any rate I'd rather have that repeated." 

Being informed of the death of John Morgan, he said, 
" Well; I wouldn't crow over any body's death ; but I can 
take this as resignedly as any dispensation of Providence. 
Morgan was a coward, a nigger-driver; a low creature, 
such as you Northern men know nothing about." 

The political horizon was still overcast, but he spoke 
with unaffected confidence and cheerfulness of the result ; 
saying with emphasis, " I rely upon the religious sentiment 
of the country, which I am told is very largely for me." 

Even in times of deepest solicitude, he maintained this 
cheerful serenity before others. It may be said of him, as 
of his great prototype, William of Orange, " his jocoseness 
was partly natural, partly intentional. In the darkest 
hours of his country's trial, he affected a serenity which he 
did not always feel, so that his apparent gaiety at momen- 
tous epochs was even censured by dullards, who could not 
comprehend its philosophy. He went through life bear- 
ing the load of a people's sorrows upon his shoulders with 
a smiling face." It is pleasant to know that what was 
perhaps the last official act of the President before the fatal 
night, was performed in this spirit of joyousness. The 



192 % DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

Governor of Maryland called upon him with a friend late 
on Friday, and found him very cheerful over the state of 
the country. At the close of the interview, one of the 
visitors asked a little favor for a friend; the President 
wrote the necessary order, and said, " any thing now to 
make the people happy." 

His kindness and sensibility were proverbial almost to a 
fault. Yet no other single trait so well exhibits the 
majesty of his soul ; for it was not a sentimental tender- 
ness, the mere weakness of a sympathetic nature, but a 
kindness that proceeded from an intelligent sympathy and 
good will for humanity, and a Christian hatred of all 
injustice and wrong. He once said in a political speech, 
" The Saviour, I suppose, did not expect that any human 
creature could be perfect as the Father in Heaven ; but 
He said, As your Father in Heaven is perfect, be ye also 
perfect. He set that up as a standard, and he who did 
most toward reaching that standard, attained the highest 
degree of moral perfection." With a noble contempt for 
political prejudices, and with a touching moral simplicity, 
Mr. Lincoln avowed this principle in his treatment of the 
negro. " In pointing out that more has been given you [by 
the Creator] you cannot be justified in taking away the 
little which has been given him. If God gave him but 
little, that little let him enjoy. In the right to eat the 
bread, without the leave of any body else, which his own 
hand earns, he is my equal, and the equal of Judge 
Douglas, and the equal of every living man." In his 
highest prosperity he never forgot his kindred with men 
of low estate. Amid all the cares of office, his ear was 
always open to a tale of sorrow or of wrong, and his hand 



THOMPSON. 193 

was always ready to relieve suffering, and to remedy 
injustice. I seem to see him now, leaning against the 
railing that divides the War Office from the White House, 
while the carriage is waiting at the door, and listening to 
the grievance of a plain man, then sitting down upon the 
coping and writing on a card an order to have the case 
investigated and remedied. An undignified position do 
you say ? it was the native dignity of kindness. 

Sometimes a personal sorrow opens a little rift through 
which you can look down into the depths of a great soul. 
I once looked thus for an instant into the soul of Richard 
Cobden. Having had some slight association with Mr. 
Cobden, in England, upon the question of common school 
education, when he came here in 1859, I attended him to 
some of our public schools. On leaving the Thirteenth 
Street School, I inquired if he would go over to the Free 
Academy. " No," said he, with a quick emphasis, " you 
must not take me to any more boys' schools ; I can't bear 
it." The drop that trembled in his eye interpreted his 
meaning. Just before leaving home, he had laid his only 
son, a bright lad of 14, in the church-yard where he him- 
self now lies. Like Burke, " he had begun to live in an 
inverted order ; they who ought to have succeeded him 
had gone before him." I had honored Mr. Cobden 
before, I have loved him since. 

In the spring of 1S62, the President spent several days 
at Fortress Monroe, awaiting military operations upon the 
peninsula. As a portion of the cabinet were with him, that 
was temporarily the seat of government, and he bore with 
him constantly the burden of public affairs. His favorite 
diversion was reading Shakspeare, whom he rendered 



194 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

with fine discrimination of emphasis and feeling. One 
day, (it chanced to be the day before the taking of 
Norfolk,) as he sat reading alone, he called to his Aide in 
the adjoining room, " You have been writing long enough, 
Colonel, come in here ; I want to read you a passage in 
Hamlet." He read the discussion on ambition between 
Hamlet and his courtiers,* and the soliloquy in which 
conscience debates of a future state.f This was followed 
by passages from Macbeth. Then opening to King John, 
he read from the third act the passage in which Constance 
bewails her imprisoned, lost boy. 

[The King commands] — Bind up your tresses. 

Constance. — Yes, that I will ; and wherefore will I do it ? 
I tore them from their bonds ; and cried aloud, 
that these hands could so redeem my son 
As they have given these hairs their liberty! 
But now I envy at their liberty, 
And will again commit them to their bonds, 
Because my poor child is a prisoner : 

Never, never 

Must I behold my pretty Arthur more. 

King Philip. — You are as fond of grief, as of your child. 

Constance. — Grief fills the room up of my absent child, 

Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, 
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, 
Remembers me of all his gracious parts, 
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form. 
Then have I reason to be fond of grief. 
lord, my boy, my Arthur, my fair son ! 
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world I 
My widow- comfort, and my sorrow's cure. 

He closed the book, and recalling the words — 

And, father cardinal, I have heard you say 
That we shall see and know our friends in heaven, 
If that be true, I shall see my boy again. — 
* Act II., Scene ii. f Act III., Scene i. Act III., Scene iv. 



THOMPSON. 195 

Mr. Lincoln said, " Colonel, did yon ever dream of a 
Lost friend, and feel that you were holding sweet commu- 
nion with that friend, and yet have a sad consciousness 
that it was not a reality ? Just so I dream of my boy 
Willie." Overcome with emotion, he dropped his head 
on the table, and sobbed aloud. Truly does Col. Cannon 
observe, that "this exhibition of parental affection and 
grief, before a comparative stranger, showed not only his 
tender nature, but his great simplicity and naturalness — 
the transparency of his character. It was most suggest- 
ive.* 

It was meet that Willie should be borne with him in 
his last long journey, to rest hereafter in the same tomb ; 
for, believe me, he would have prized the love of his little 
Willie above all the homage of the nation's tears. 

Akin to this kindliness and sensibility was his magna- 
nimity of soul. " I would despise myself," said he, in his 
debate with Douglas, " if I supposed myself ready to 
deal less liberally with an adversary than I was willing to 
be treated myself." And again, he said, "If I have 
stated anything erroneous, if I have brought forward any- 
thing not a fact, it needed only that Judge Douglas should 
point it out ; it will not even ruffle me to take it back. 
I do not deal in that way." How magnanimously he 
disclaimed personal praise, and accorded honor to others. 
You will at once recall his letter to General Grant, after 
the capture of Vicksburg. " I do not remember that you 
and I ever met personally. I write this now as a grateful 
acknowledgment of the almost inestimable service you 

* I am indebted for this incident to Col. Le Grand B. Cannon, then of 
Gen. Wool's stuff. 



196 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

have done the country. I write to say a word further. 
* # * When you took Port Gibson, Grand Gulf and 
vicinity, I thought you should go down the river and join 
General Banks, and when you turned northward, east of 
the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to 
make the personal acknowledgment that you were right, 
and I was wrong." 

How gently he assuaged the tumult of party strifes, by 
his tone of magnanimity toward his defeated opponent, in 
acknowledging a popular ovation rendered him upon his 
re-election to the Presidency. 

Such was the whole spirit of his public life, culminating 
at last in an utterance which shall be immortal: — " With 

MALICE TOWARD NONE, WITH CHARITY FOR ALL." 

The inflexible integrity of Mr. Lincoln has imprinted 
itself upon the heart and the history of the American 
people in that familiar but honorable epithet — " Honest 
Abe." His was not simply a commercial honesty, in dol- 
lars and cents, but honesty in opinion, honesty in speech, 
honesty of purpose, honesty in action. " Always speak 
the truth, my son," said his mother to him, when, in her 
Sabbath readings, she expounded the ninth command- 
ment. " I do tell the truth," was his uniform reply. 

When Douglas attempted to impeach a statement of a 
brother senator who was Mr. Lincoln's personal friend, 
Lincoln replied, " I am ready to indorse him, because, 
neither in that thing, nor in any other, in all the years 
that I have known Lyman Trumbull, have I known him 
to fail of his word, or tell a falsehood, large or small ;" and 
that, to Abraham Lincoln, was a certificate of character. 

His integrity carried him through arduous political cam- 



THOMPSON. 197 

paigns without the shadow of deviation from principle. 
He adopted great principles, and by these he was willing 
to live or to die. His debate with Douglas, as I have be- 
fore said, was throughout a struggle for principle — the 
principle that slavery was wrong, and, therefore, that the 
nation should not sanction it nor suffer its extension. " I 
do not claim," he said, " to be unselfish ; I do not pretend 
that I would not like to go to the United States Senate. I 
make no such hypocritical pretence ; but I do say to you that, 
in this mighty issue, it is nothing to you, nothing to the mass 
of the people of the nation, whether or not Judge Douglas 
or myself shall ever be heard of after this night. It may 
be a trifle to either of us; but, in connection with this 
mighty question, upon which hang the destinies of the 
nation perhaps, it is absolutely nothing." 

When about to assume the grave responsibilities of the 
Presidency, he said to his fellow citizens, " I promise you 
that I bring to the work a sincere heart. Whether I will 
bring a head equal to that heart will be for future times 
to determine."* That his head was equal to his task all 
now agree ; but it is far more to his honor that, through 
all the temptations of office he held fast his integrity. 
One who was much with him testifies that, " in every- 
thing he did he was governed by his conscience, and when 
ambition intruded, it was thrust aside by his conviction 
of right." What he said he did, without shadow of turn- 
ing. He was as firm for the right as he was forbearing 
toward the wrong-doer. How solemn his appeal to the 
seceders, at the close of his first inaugural — " You have 
no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the Government ; 

* Speech at Philadelphia, Feb. 20, 18G1. 



198 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, pro- 
tect, and defend it." That oath he kept with all honesty 
and fidelity. 

This honesty of principle inspired him with true moral 
heroism. Abraham Lincoln always met his duty as calmly 
as he met his death. He knew at any time in the last 
four years that to do his duty would be to court death ; 
but in his first message he laid down the moral considera- 
tions that overruled all personal fears. u As a private citi- 
zen the Executive could not have consented that these 
institutions shall perish ; much less could he, in betrayal 
of so vast and so sacred a trust as these free people had con- 
fided to him. He felt that he had no moral right to shrink, 
nor even to count the chances of his own life in what 
might follow. In full view of his great responsibility, he 
has so far done what he has deemed his duty. Having 
thus chosen our cause without guile, and with pure pur- 
pose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward with- 
out fear and with manly hearts." 

Bishop Simpson has quoted from a speech of Mr. Lin- 
coln in 1839, a declaration of the most heroic patriotism. 
Of the slave power, he said, "Broken by it? I too may 
be asked to bow to it. I never will. The probability that 
we may fail in the struggle, ought not to deter us from 
the support of a cause which we deem to be just. It shall 
not deter me. If I ever feel the soul within me elevate 
and expand to dimensions not wholly unworthy of its 
Almighty architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of 
my country deserted by all the world beside, and I stand- 
ing up boldly and alone, and hurling defiance at her victo- 
rious oppressors. Here, without contemplating conse- 



THOMPSON.. 199 

quences, before high Heaven and in the face of the world, 
I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, as I deem it, of 
the land of my life, nry liberty, and my love." 

With what a lofty courage, too, did he stand by the 
rights and liberties of those to whom he was pledged by 
his proclamation of January 1st, 1863. What nobler 
words could be inscribed upon his monument than these 
from his last message ? "I repeat the declaration made a 
year ago, that while I remain in my present position I 
shall not attempt to retract or modify the Emancipation 
Proclamation. Nor shall I return to slavery any person 
who is free by the terms of that Proclamation, or by any 
of the Acts of Congress. If the people should, by what- 
ever mode or means, make it an executive duty to re- 
enslave such persons, another, and not I, must be their 
instrument to perform it." 

It was that decree of emancipation that inspired the 
hatred that compassed his murder. Yet from the day of 
his nomination he had been marked for a violent death ; 
and knowing this, he had devoted his life to the cause of 
liberty. At Independence Hall in Philadelphia, he said, 
in 1861, " Can this country be saved upon the basis of the 
sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence ? 
If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men 
in the world if I can help to save it. If it cannot be 
saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful. Lut it 
this country cannot be saved without giving up that prin- 
ciple, I was about to say / would rather be assassinated on 
this spot than surrender it. I have said nothing" but what 
I am willing to live by, and, if it be the pleasure of 
Almighty God, die by." 



200 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

A calm trust in God was the loftiest, worthiest charac- 
teristic in the life of Abraham Lincoln. He had learned 
this long ago. " I would rather Abe would be able to read 
the Bible than to own a farm, if he can't have but one," 
said his godly mother. That Bible was Abraham Lin- 
coln's guide. Mr. Jay informs me that, being on the 
steamer which conveyed the governmental party from 
Fortress Monroe to Norfolk, after the destruction of the 
Merrimac, while all on board were excited by the novelty 
of the excursion and by the incidents it recalled, he missed 
the President from the company, and on looking about 
found him in a quiet nook reading a well-worn Testament. 
Such an incidental revelation of his religious habits is 
worth more than pages of formal testimony. 

The constant recognition of God in his public docu- 
ments shows how completely his mind was under the do- 
minion of religious faith. This is never a common-place 
formalism nor a misplaced cant. To satisfy ourselves of 
Mr. Lincoln's Christian character, we have no need to 
resort to apochryphal stories that illustrate the assurance 
of his visitors quite as much as the simplicity of his faith ; 
we have but to follow internal evidences, as the workings 
of his soul reveal themselves through his own published 
utterances. On leaving Springfield for the capital, he 
said, U A duty devolves upon me which is, perhaps, greater 
than that which has devolved upon any other man since 
the days of Washington. He never would have succeeded 
except for the aid of Divine Providence, upon which he 
at all times relied. I feel that I cannot succeed without 
the same Divine aid which sustained him, and on the same 
Almighty Being I place my reliance for support ; and I 



THOMPSON. 201 

hope you, my friends, will all pray that I may receive 
that Divine assistance, without which I cannot succeed, but 
with which success is certain." He knew himself to be sur- 
rounded by a religious community who were acquainted 
with his life, and his words were spoken in all sincerity. 

At Gettysburg, with a grand simplicity worthy of De- 
mosthenes, he dedicated himself with religious earnestness 
to the great task yet before him, in humble dependence upon 
God. Owning the power of vicarious sacrifice, he said, 
" We cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot 
hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, 
who struo-o-led here, have consecrated it far above our 
power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor 
long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget 
what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be 
dedicated here to the unfinished work that they have thus 
far so nobly carried on." 

We distinctly trace the growth of this feeling of religious 
consecration in his public declarations. " We can but press 
on guided by the best light God gives us, trusting that in his 
own good time and wise way,' all will be well. Let us not 
be over-sanguine of a speedy final triumph. Let us be 
quite sober. Let us diligently apply the means, never 
doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give 
us the rightful result." * " The Nation's condition is not 
what either party, or any man, desired or expected. God 
alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. 
If God now wills the removal of a great wrung, and wills 
also that we of the North, as well as you of the South, 
shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impar- 

* Letter to Kentucky. 



202 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

tial history will find therein new cause to attest and re- 
vere the justice and goodness of God." * This devout 
feeling culminated ' at length in that sublime confession 
of faith, of humility, of dependence, of consecration, 
known as his last inaugural. 

It is said upon good authority, that had he lived he 
would have made a public profession of his faith in Christ. 
But Abraham Lincoln needed no other profession than 
that which he made on the 4th of March last, in the hear- 
ing of all nations. 

A Christian lady who was profoundly impressed with 
the religions tone of the inaugural, requested through 
a friend in Congress, that the President would give her 
his autograph by the very pen that wrote that now im- 
mortal document, adding that her sons should be taught 
to repeat its closing paragraph with their catechism. The 
President, with evident emotion, replied, " She shall have 
my signature, and with it she shall have that paragraph. 
It comforts me to know that my sentiments are supported 
by the Christian ladies of our country." 

His pastor at Washington, after being near him steadily, 
and with him often, for more than four years, bears this 
testimony. "I speak what I know, and testify what I have 
often heard him say, when I affirm, the guidance and the 
mercy of God were the props on which he humbly and 
habitually leaned ;" and that " his abiding confidence in 
God, and in the final triumph of truth and righteousness 
through Him and for His sake, was his noblest virtue, his 
grandest principle, the secret alike of his strength, his 
patience, and his success." 

* Letter to A. G. Hodges, April, 1864. 



THOMPSON. 203 

Thus trained of God for his great work, and called of 
God in the fullness of time, how grandly did Abraham 
Lincoln meet his responsibilities, and round up his life. 
How he grew under pressure. How often did his pa- 
tient heroism in the earlier years of the war serve us in 
the stead of victories. He carried our mighty sorrows, 
while he never knew rest, nor the enjoyment of office. 
How wisely did his cautious, sagacious, comprehensive 
judgment deliver us from the perils of haste. How 
clearly did he discern the guiding hand and the unfolding 
will of God. How did he tower above the storm in his 
unselfish patriotism, resolved to save the unity of the na- 
tion. And when the day of duty and of opportunity came, 
how firmly did he deal the last great blow for liberty, 
striking the shackles from three million slaves ; while 
"upon this, sincerely believed to be an act of justice war- 
ranted by the Constitution, (upon military necessity), he 
invoked the considerate judgment of mankind, and the 
gracious favor of Almighty God." Rightly did he regard 
this Proclamation as the central act of his administration, 
and the central fact of the 19th century. Let it be en- 
graved upon our walls, upon our hearts; let the scene adorn 
the rotunda of the capitol, henceforth a sacred shrine of 
Liberty. It needed only that the seal of martyrdom upon 
such a life should cause his virtues to be transfigured before 
us in imperishable grandeur, and his name to be emblazoned 
with heaven's own light upon that topmost arch of fame 
that shall stand when governments and nations fall. 

Moderate, resolute, 
Whole in himself, a common good. 
Mourn for the man of amplest influence 



204 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

Yet clearest of ambitious crime, 
Our greatest yet with least pretence, 
Rich iu saving common-sense, 
And as the greatest only are, 
In his simplicity sublime. 

Who never sold the truth, to serve the hour, 
Nor palter' d with Eternal God for power; 
Who let the turbid streams of rumor flow 
Thro' either babbling world of high aud low ; 
Whose life was work, whose language rife 
With rugged maxims hewn from life ; 
Who never spoke against a foe. 

And to this, borrowed of England's laureate, we add the 
spontaneous offering of our own uncrowned bard, the 
laureate of the people. 

Oh, slow to smite, and swift to spare, 

Gentle and merciful and just ! 
Who, in the fear of God, didst bear 

The sword of power, a nation's trust ! 

In sorrow by thy bier we stand, 

Amid the awe that hushes all, 
And speak the anguish of the land 

That shook with horror at thy fall. 

Thy task is done; the bond are free ; 

We bear thee to an honored grave, 
Whose proudest monument shall be 

The broken fetters of the slave. 

Pure was thy life ; its bloody close 
Hath placed thee with the sons of light, 

Among the noble host of those 

Who perished in the cause of Right. 

But this grand life imposes upon us lessons of duty, as 



THOMPSON. 205 

well as claims of honor. And we best honor the life 
itself by worthily fulfilling its lessons. 

1. The life of Mr. Lincoln should incite us to unswerv- 
ing fidelity to our institutions of civil government, as 
identified both with the existence of the nation and with 
the welfare of mankind. Standing by his grave, we must 
renew for ourselves the vow which he made in our name 
by the graves of our dead at Gettysburgh — resolving that 
" the dead shall not have died in vain — that the nation 
shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that 
the government of the people, by the people, and for the 
people, shall not perish from the earth." 

In Ms first message lie taught us that on the side of the 
Union, the struggle was for " maintaining in the world that 
form and substance of government whose leading object is 
to elevate the condition of men, to lift artificial weights 
from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit 
for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance 
in the race of life ; — this is the leading object of the gov- 
ernment for which we contend." 

And, again, in his second message, he showed that " the 
insurrection was largely, if not exclusively, a war upon 
the first principle of popular government — the rights of 
the people." We have saved that principle, not for our- 
selves alone, but for mankind. 

To be true to Abraham Lincoln, is to be true to the 
American Union as the inviolate and the inviolable heri- 
tage of freedom ; — true to that great idea of a nationality 
undivided and of a sovereignty in the Nation above the 
State. In his own piquant words, we must put down 
effectually "the assumed right of a State to rule all 



206 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

which is less than itself, and ruin all which is larger than 
itself."* 

2. We must take measures for the utter extinction of 
slavery, by severing every tie of the slave-oligarchy to the 
polity and to the soil of the country. We must end this 
rebellion so effectually that not a solitary root or fibre of 
it shall remain to plague us in the future. We owe it to 
ourselves, in view of all that we have done and suffered 
in the cause ; we owe it to our dead, who gave themselves 
for our salvation ; we owe it to our posterity, who shall 
reap what we now sow ; we owe it to mankind, to whom 
we should now furnish an example of a free, just, and 
peaceful government ; and we owe it to the memory of 
the leader and martyr who hath consecrated our cause by 
his great sacrifice, that we guard effectually against the 
recurrence of a war of opposing sections or civilizations. 
And for this it is indispensable that we stamp this rebel- 
lion as a crime, that we measure out to its sponsors and 
abettors appropriate penalties, and that we root out the 
whole system of society by which it was inspired, and for 
which it has been maintained : — for this conspiracy was a 
crime, without excuse, on the part of its leaders, whether 
of ignorance, of provocation, or of motive ; without color 
or mitigation from beginning to end. It should be held 
up as a crime, to the execration of our children and of 
coming ages ; and to this end we must condemn the con- 
spirators by a national judgment, that will ever after 
deter unprincipled and unscrupulous demagogues from a 
like attempt. It is not .enough that they who have 
brought this terrible ruin upon the country be left simply 

* Speech to Legislature of Indiana, 1861. 



THOMPSON. 207 

to share its natural consequences to themselves. There 
must be a verdict against the crime, and a judgment upon 
the criminals, that shall stand as a warning, dark, frown- 
ing; terrible, to all agitators and conspirators within the 
bosom of the republic. No timid or time-serving policy, 
no weak and sickly sentimentalism, no pity for the crimi- 
nals themselves, no good-natured forbearance toward a 
section or class once courted with political favoritism, 
should be suffered to restrain the judgment due to this 
stupendous crime. 

Now, since slavery inspired the rebellion, and since this 
was hi' turn inspired by pride of social caste and by lust 
of political domination, the axe should be laid at the roots 
of the system that gave to the conspiracy its pretext and 
its vitality. The penalty of a voluntary and determined 
participation in the rebellion should be the peremptory 
alienation of the estates of the conspirators, and the per- 
petual disfranchisement of the conspirators themselves. 
This I urge as the most radical and effective form of jus- 
tice, and as indispensable to the peace of the country and 
to the safety of liberty. 

Two popular cries, u Slavery is dead," and " Hang the 
traitors," are diverting the public mind from that broader 
and sterner justice which is needed for the destruction of 
the conspiracy itself, and as a warning against another 
such attempt in after times. Slavery is not dead. In 
two States it remains untouched by the Proclamation of 
Emancipation. In nearly the whole region of the rebel- 
lion, the local laws, which gave it life, are unrepealed ; 
and should the rebel States be restored to their status in 
the Union without the previous dispossession and disfran 



208 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

chisement of the rebels themselves, those laws would con- 
front the proclamation in the courts. The Constitutional 
Amendment, prohibiting slavery, is not yet sanctioned by 
the requisite number of States, nor even by all the North- 
ern States. Southern planters professing loyalty to the 
Union, have been known to boast that they would recover 
their slaves; and they would find politicians at the North 
ready to aid them, and to divide the country upon that 
issue. Slavery is not dead. Now, hanging a few traitors 
will not kill slavery ; and our danger is, that slavery itself 
will slip through the noose, and that when it shall begin 
to revive from the shock, many who are now shouting, 
"Hang the traitors," will take up the old familiar cry, 
" Hang the abolitionists." It is because of this now im- 
minent peril, a peril that makes peace more threatening 
than war, that I would urge upon all who love Peace, 
Liberty, and Union, a measure dictated not by leniency 
toward criminals, but by the broadest considerations of 
justice and of public policy. As a help to the discussion 
of this measure, I submit the following propositions : 

1. Capital punishment is the appropriate penalty for 
the crime of murder; and civil government is clothed 
with the sword for the punishment of crimes against the 
life of society. 

2. The conspirators against the Government of the 
United States should have justice meted out to them as 
criminals against society and the state. 

3. Since the Constitution carefully defines the crime of 
treason, but leaves it to Congress to declare its penalty, 
we are not shut up to any single form of penalty against 
these traitors ; but should a capital indictment under the 



THOMPSON. 20f> 

law of 1 790 fail, or should a jury fail of a capital con- 
viction, the several damnatory acts of Congress during the 
rebellion are still valid as penal ordinances. 

4. There can be no doubt that the leading traitors de- 
serve to forfeit their lives for their crime. 

5. There can hardly be a doubt, that the execution of 
the leaders within ninety days after the conspiracy broke 
out, would have crushed the conspiracy by inspiring ter- 
ror ; but slavery would have remained intact, the mob by 
this time would have been at its old work of hanging 
negroes and abolitionists, and the seeds of rebellion would 
have ripened into another crop of traitors, nourished from 
the blood of men reputed martyrs for the South and its 
institutions. 

6. The rebellion, which at the outset was simply a 
traitorous conspiracy, had grown to the gigantic propor- 
tions of a civil war, long evenly balanced in the scales of 
battle. The great powers of Europe recognized the rebels 
as belligerents, and we were compelled to an indirect 

1 recognition of them, so far as the exchange of prisoners ; 
and moreover, our late President, with the Secretaryof 
State, held informal consultations with their commission- 
ers upon terms of peace. Now, there is a growing tend- 
ency in the civilized world to place political crimes in a 
different category from common crimes against person and 
life ; and in dealing with the rebel leaders, we must have 
due respect to the enlightened sentiment of Christendom, 
and be able to justify ourselves in the verdict of impartial 
history. The question is not simply what the traitors 
deserve, but what form of penalty is now best for the 
safety of the country and for our good name in the com- 



210 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

ing centuries ; and therefore, not for their sakes but for 
our own, we can afford to let them live, seeing that we 
can inflict upon them a penalty more trenchant and more 
radical, dooming them to obscurity and ignonimy without 
exciting sympathy for them at home or abroad. More- 
over, since those who have been in arms against the gov- 
ernment, — which is the overt act of treason — are virtually 
set free of the gallows by the military action of the gov- 
ernment itself, would it satisfy the claims of justice to 
hang the officials of the bubble confederacy ? and — what 
is of more consequence — would this break down effectually 
the spirit of the rebellion, and root out its motive and cause % 

]No doubt these conspirators richly deserve such a fate ; 
and should it befall them, I would accept it with becoming 
resignation. But the question is one of an enlightened 
and comprehensive policy for the nation. We must be 
careful to keep our hands clean of even the imputation of 
a passionate revenge ; and we must be careful also to 
keep our soil clear of the seeds of rancor and of treason 
for the future. It is worthy of consideration, then, 
whether the mode of dealing with the traitors that I here 
propose, will not be more effectual than would be the 
capital execution of a few ; for I take it that the public 
mind would soon be glutted with such executions, and 
then there might come a reaction of pity and of sympathy 
that would allow the real authors of the conspiracy as a 
class — the slaveocracy — to go unwhipt of justice. But 
shall the way be open for Lee, or any of the paroled con- 
spirators, to resume their citizenship within the Union they 
have labored to destroy ? 

I do not ask, could we trust them again in the places of 



THOMPSON. 211 

power they once desecrated by perjury and treason. I do 
not ask, could there be good-fellowship with them again in 
the Senate ? — confidence in them in the Cabinet % I ask, 
is there nothing due to Justice? Nothing due to the dig- 
nity of the Nation ? Nothing due to History ? Nothing 
due to posterity ? We must brand this monster crime 
with a penalty that will be felt, with an infamy that will 
never be forgotten at home or abroad. 

Commonly, but not invariably, capital punishment is the 
most dreaded as well as the most ignominious form of pen- 
alty. But there are cases in which penalty comes in forms 
more dreadful and more ignominious than the scaffold. 
Our first feeling was one of regret that the murderer of 
the President was not brought to the gallows. But he 
would have then had the histrionic effect of a state trial, 
and perhaps a degree of pity, such as even the greatest 
criminal draws to himself, after the first hideousness of his 
crime has passed. Now, what a fate was his ! I shudder 
at the terrors of divine retribution. In bodily anguish and 
tortured by fear, skulking from the view of men, with 
none daring to screen him, nor to give him succor, dying 
daily a thousand deaths, tracked at length to his hiding 
place, smoked out like some noisome beast from his lair, 
and shot down without mercy, yet knowing his miserable 
fate; the nerves of motion paralyzed, the nerves of feeling 
intensified^ so that he begged for death as a relief from 
misery ; and at the very time that the honored body of 
his victim was being borne through the land amid the 
mournful tributes of the whole people, his unpitied car- 
case, unshrouded and uncoffined, was carried out into the 
darkness, the stars forbearing to look upon it, the earth 



212 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

and the sea refusing it burial, while for every tear that 
dropped upon the bier of the martyred President an ex- 
ecration fell upon the assassin, as he sunk in the fathom- 
less unknown. There may be a justice more terrible than 
the scaffold, or there may be a living infamy worse than 
death. 

If now we strip all who have knowingly, freely, and 
persistently upheld this rebellion, of their property and 
their citizenship, they will become beggared and infamous 
outcasts ; fleeing the country, not as hunted exiles court- 
ing sympathy abroad and creating sympathy at home, 
but like Cain, with the brand upon their forehead, and 
with a punishment greater than they can bear. They 
will not dare to return to the South, for their wealth 
being gone, and their social and political power broken, 
they would find none so poor to do them reverence ; nor 
would they risk their lives among the common people, 
whom they have deceived and ruined. The landed aristo- 
cracy which had fostered slavery, being thus evicted of 
the soil, and the political power that had upheld it, being 
evicted of the state, slavery would die beyond the possibil- 
ity of resuscitation. The Union people of the South, and 
the mass of the common people, won back by kindness, 
uniting with our veterans and Northern emigrants, would 
plant farms and villages upon the old slave plantations, 
and, with our help in schools and churches, a new social 
order would arise upon the basis of freedom and loyalty ; 
—to be guaranteed by the institutions of education and 
religion, and by placing the ballot in the hands of every 
man who is known to be loyal, and who can read it. 

All this . must be a work of time ; but the work is 



THOMPSON. 213 

nothing less than to build up society and the state from 
the foundation, and this in the midst of chaos. There is 
now nothing of the old order of things that we can safely 
build upon, or that will serve as material for building. 
For, since the States rebelled in their organic character, 
they forfeited existence, and lapsed into anarchy ; every 
rebel then forfeited all his privileges as a citizen of the 
United States ; so that, as I said at the opening of the 
war, there could be no question of in the Union or out 
of it, but the only alternative was in the Union, with full 
allegiance to its supremacy, or under it, subject to its 
authority, but debarred from all its privileges ; and now 
from that chaotic territory, new States must arise under 
the tutelage of Congressional law. Our immediate danger 
is from the recognition of old State forms in the South, 
and the rapid restoration of crude State governments. 
When you consider that except in the naturalization of 
foreigners, not Congress but the State fixes the condition 
of citizenship, you will see how great the danger is in re- 
admitting to their status in the Union States scarce hall 
purged of treason. 

Loyal men in the South, having good means of infor- 
mation, estimate that seventy-five per cent, of the land in 
the Southern States is held by men who have been directly 
or indirectly in complicity with treason against the United 
States. If this tremendous political and social power be 
restored to these men by the mere fiction of an oath of 
allegiance, what shall hinder their imposing disabilities 
upon the colored race and the poor whites that will virtu- 
ally restore the old regime of the slave-aristocracy ? With 
land and legislation in their hands, they will again become 



214 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

the dictators of Southern sentiment, and by concentrat- 
ing upon a common policy will make terms with political 
parties at the North for their own aggrandizement. 

The time has fully come when, as Mr. Lincoln signifi- 
cantly said in his first Inaugural, we must " provide by 
law for the enforcement of that clause in the Constitution 
which guarantees that the citizens of each State shall be 
entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in 
the several States." The time has fully come when we 
must make good his official declaration of July 30, 1863, 
that " it is the duty of every Government to give protec- 
tion to its citizens, of whatever class, color, or condition." 
The time is fully come when we must give vitality and 
practical effect to the fourth section of the fourth article 
of the Constitution, that " the United States shall guar- 
antee to every State in this Union a republican form of 
government." 

Mr. Lincoln has laid down with his usual clearness the 
principle that governs the case : " An attempt to guar- 
antee and protect a revived State government, constructed 
in whole or in preponderating part, from the very element 
against whose hostility and violence it is to be protected, 
is simply absurd. There must be a test by which to sepa- 
rate the opposing elements, so as to build only from the 
sound." But just at the critical point of fixing the test,, 
Mr. Lincoln's confiding kindness got the better of his good 
judgment. He did not make sufficient allowance for 
human depravity, nor for political chicanery ; and his 
amnesty oath opens a wide door for perjured rebels to 
plot new mischief within the State. 

But let us once clear the ground of the rebellious lead- 



THOMPSON. 215 

ers, by unrelenting confiscation and disfranchisement, then 
let Congress fix the status of citizens, and these in due 
time frame a free State constitution, and all is clear and 
safe. Do you shrink from the time and cost of each meas- 
ures ? I grant it were easier and cheaper to hang a few 
rebels ; but we should aim to destroy the rebellion, so that 
it shall have no issue and no successor. If true to Mr. 
Lincoln, we shall see that the work of emancipation is 
made sure, and we shall but follow his example by going 
beyond his own position, as the logic of events shall lead 
us forward. That the nation may live, slavery must utterly 
die. 

3. Our last lesson from the life of Abraham Lincoln is 
that of unwavering confidence in God, for the guidance, 
the defence and the deliverance of the nation. Mr. Cob- 
den was wont to say of men in public life, " You have no 
hold of any one w T ho has no religious faith." Our hold 
upon Mr. Lincoln was in his character as a man of posi- 
tive and earnest religious convictions ; and his hold upon 
us and upon posterity is mainly through that character. 
He never distrusted God, and he was willing to follow im- 
plicitly the teachings of the Bible and of Divine Provi- 
dence. His death has thrown us back once more upon 
God as our helper and our trust. In his own words, " I 
turn and look to the great American people, and to that 
God who has never forsaken them." 

The historian of France has written, that when Louis 
XIY. died, " it was not a man, it was a world that 
ended." But with Abraham Lincoln a new era was born, 
that is glorified and made perpetual through his death. 
He has told how once he was startled and terrified at 



216 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

being awakened at midnight to see the stars falling and to 
hear the cry that the end of the world had come. But he 
looked up to the Great Bear and the Pointers, and seeing 
them unshaken, he returned to his rest. And now that 
he has gone so calmly to his last rest, we look up through 
the cloud and see the steady pointers of the sky. A star 
of the first magnitude has fallen from the meridian ; but 
the pole is unchanged, and the world holds on its course. 
Angel hands are only shifting the curtains of the sky for 
the dawn. The day is brightening ; let us turn from this 
night of sorrow and of blood to welcome it with our 
morning hymn of hope and praise. 

North, with all thy vales of green, 

South, with all thy palms, 
From peopled towns and fields between, 

Uplift the voice of psalms. 
Eaise ancient East, the anthem high, 
And let the youthful West reply. 

Lo ! in the clouds of heaven appears 

God's well beloved Son ; 
He brings a train of brighter years — 

His kingdom is begun ; 
He comes a guilty world to bless 
With mercy, truth, and righteousness. 

Father, haste the promised hour 

When at his feet shall lie, 
All rule, authority, and power, 

Beneath the ample sky. 
When He shall reign from pole to pole, 
The Lord of every human soul. 

"When all shall heed the words He said 
Amid their daily cares, 



THOMPSON. 217 

And by the loving life he led, 

Shall strive to pattern theirs ; 
And He who conquered death shall win 
The mighty conquest over sin.* 

* Hymn by W. C. Bryant, read by Eev. S. Osgood, D. D., at the commem- 
orative service in Union Square, April 25, 1865. 



SERMON XI. 



KEY. JAMES EELLS, D. D. 



" I will lift up my eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. 
My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth." — Psalm 
cxxi. 1, 2. 

It is impossible for me to preach the sermon I designed 
for this morning. My heart beats too closely in sympathy 
with your own to allow the consideration of any ordinary 
theme, while I feel wholly unfitted to speak to you on 
that which will give place to no other. Never within my 
recollection — perhaps, never since the formation of our 
government — have the masses of the people been more 
profoundly moved with consternation and grief than with- 
in the past twenty-four hours. I went through our great 
thoroughfares of business soon after the first awful tidings 
reached us yesterday morning, that I might learn some- 
thing more definite, even though it should be the con- 
firmation of my fears ; and the faces of all classes of men 
presented the most sad, yet most eloquent, commentary 
on the great calamity that has befallen the nation. The 
laborers, gathered on the corners of the streets, were 
speaking in low and mournful tones of the President's 
death. The companies around the bulletin boards read 

219 



220 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

the dispatch which sealed all hope with the manifest con- 
viction of the public loss. The men of business greeted 
me only with exclamations which made known their deep 
concern in so solemn an emergency. Political distinctions 
were not regarded — there was a universal feeling of dis- 
tress and astonishment that the two chief officers of the 
government should be the victims of an assassin. Such 
a day as yesterday has rarely been known in the history 
of nations. Such a Sabbath as this has come to us in no 
part of the terrible history of the past four years ; and we 
should be thankful that its sacred calm, its blessed privi- 
leges, its hallowed inspirations of peace, and comfort, and 
trust, and hope come so soon to relieve and cheer a Chris- 
tian people. ' 

There are many things which conspire to occasion the 
feelings which oppress us. That the President should 
be killed is itself a fact awakening anxious thought in the 
minds of those who value the stability and strength of 
republican institutions. That he should be killed at such 
a crisis as we have reached in the great struggle through 
which we have been passing adds much to the excitement 
that in any event would prevail. Whatever opinions may 
be held respecting the policy pursued by him, it was uni- 
form, and his own ; it was identified with the whole mili- 
tary and political state of affairs ; it was comprehended 
by him, of necessity, as no other can comprehend it ; and 
a radical change at this juncture is impossible. The ad- 
ministration is to continue; yet he who seemed alone 
able to prosecute its measures has dropped from his place. 
Moreover, we were in the midst of almost unrestrained 
jubilation on account of returning peace. The force of 
our enemies was broken ; the power of the government 
was acknowledged ; the hearts of the people were thrilled 
with the news that day communicated, that the prepara- 



EELLS. OOI 

tions for war need no longer continue, and those who had 
long been absent as the country's defenders would soon 
come back to their families and homes. The pulse never 
had been higher and stronger in the arteries of popular 
interest, and hope and joy mingled in all demonstrations, 
without regard to the differences that had existed. The 
most wonderful week of our national history was drawing 
to a close. We looked forward to this day as one of gen- 
eral and overflowing thanksgiving to God. Alas ! how, 
as in a moment, has all been changed, and a mourning 
people gather in their sanctuaries, with tokens of their 
bereavement, and feel humbled under the mighty h?nd 
whose stroke they did not anticipate. 

Then, the character of the President, which has beei. so 
fully revealed to us, adds greatly to the grief we do not 
seek to repress. It is not too much to say that he has oc- 
cupied his place in the most turbulent era — all things con- 
sidered — through which any nation ever passed success- 
fully. Issues were involved affecting millions of people 
and untold interests, monetary and political, on each side. 
Passions were roused to frenzy. There was no possibility 
that men should agree as to the proper course to be pur- 
sued. There was no hope that any policy that should be 
adopted would be admitted by all to be wise. Yet the 
President must adopt some course and pursue it as wisely 
as possible, meeting the opposition that could not be 
avoided from men excited to the highest pitch. It is a 
marvel that, after passing through such an ordeal for four 
years, his opponents unite with his associates in the belief 
that he was an honest as well as able man ; that, to a de- 
gree which the feelings of the people this day exhibit, he 
was beloved as well as respected. Multitudes who never 
saw him weep for him as though he was one of their own 
families ; and there is a consciousness, not a few of us con- 



222 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

fess with melancholy pleasure, that he had a warm place 
in our hearts as a man in full sympathy with what we 
cherish as nohle and good. No man can have a grander 
monument. No man will have a record more pure and 
worthy of those qualities which all will ultimately honor, 
whatever may be the judgment of history upon the policy 
he felt constrained to pursue. He was remarkable for 
nothing more than for his simple, rigid integrity — his 
settled purpose to do what he believed to be wise and 
right. This made it impossible for professed politicians to 
manipulate him. This gave him that noble epithet with 
which he came from his Western home to Washington, 
after a career where his character was often severely test- 
ed. This has coupled that epithet with his name, during 
his public life, wherever it has been spoken. This is ut- 
tered as one of the people's most endearing words of honor, 
now that his body is borne back to his early home ; and 
upon his monument — sacred because the occasion of his 
murder — will weeping pilgrims read the inscription in 
after years that he was " honest." No man ever showed 
himself more true to what he announced as the principles 
of right. Great in the simplicity of his character, his mo- 
tives, his perceptions, his acts ; gentle as a woman in his 
regard for others, yet resolute as fate in his determination 
to crush evil ; ostentatious in no part of his duties, made 
vain by no flattery, turned aside from his course by no 
abuse ; from the first having decided upon the outlines of 
his policy, yet listening ever for advice respecting its 
details, and reverently watching for any signal from 
Heaven that he should change ; to the end, as the nation's 
acknowledged leader, the same man, except as his powers 
had been greatly developed by the weight he carried, as 
when he came to do the nation's bidding amid the fore- 
bodings of those who knew he had not been tested — 



EELLS. 223 

there could be no more worthy type, in all essential fea- 
tures, of an American citizen. That he was killed, be- 
cause just such a man, has enshrined him in our hearts. 

It is not my purpose, however, to speak at length upon 
the character or acts of Mr. Lincoln. I allude to them 
only to show that our loss can hardly be estimated, at a 
time when such qualities as were eminent in him are to be 
far more needed than towering ability, and such indepen- 
dence of will. as would refuse to be at once the exponent 
and the leader of the people's wishes. 

There are some aspects of this affliction to which we 
should give attention, that afford some relief and many 
lessons of singular importance. They relate to the past 
and to the future, and have possibly been in your hearts 
and on your lips as you have met each other. One is 
this, that our common feeling of loss and outrage will 
tend, more than any arguments and appeals could have 
done, to bring all classes of our people together and ce- 
ment them by the impulses it will rouse in all alike. 
Xever have we needed unanimity of the masses so much 
as now, that the tiemendous issues to be settled at the 
close of the war may be so determined that the country 
may be permanently prosperous. The most logical trea- 
tises on political economy would not be sufficient to out- 
weigh the gains of intrigue and party rule. The most 
able statesmanship would not control the excitable and 
unreasoning, who compose the large majority of our citi- 
zens, who are nevertheless, in heart, patriotic, and de- 
voted to the interests dear to us all. AVe could see 
already how the people were beginning to drift apart 
upon questions that must arise, and a spirit might be fo- 
mented that would bode evil. May it not be that the 
blood of the President and his chief adviser shall be a 
bund of union which their couneel and acts could not 



224 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN!. 

have been ? May it not be that the horrors of extreme 
views, when allowed to ride over all civil protections, 
and find expression in so terrible a tragedy, will urge ns 
upon common ground, where, at least, we shall cultivate 
the feelings which are essential to happiness and success 
in a republic ? If this shall be the result, the illustrious 
victims may not be too costly a price for the blessing to 
the land. 

Another lesson we should heed respects the necessity 
of having men in office who have the regard and love of 
the people, that they may become such a bond of union, 
whether living or dead. 

And still another, that real honor is bestowed on good- 
ness, integrity, devotion to right, in our great men, 
rather than on extraordinary talent and brilliant acts, 
however great may be the powers with which they are 
associated. 

But, upon these and others which might be suggested, 
I will not dwell, as they are more appropriate to some 
other time. My object is, rather to bring more distinctly 
than ever before your minds, as the great lesson and 
most abundant source of consolation to which we should 
give heed, that truth, made so familiar, yet in such an 
hour of sorrow and extremity, all the more dear, because 
familiar, that our hope and our help are in God ! 

We learn from experience and necessity to rely on the 
men who become prominent and successful in leading 
our affairs, until almost imperceptibly we rest on them 
the responsibility and our hope. Probably none of us 
were aware how much we depended on the President, for 
safe guidance through the complications we cannot es- 
cape, and which must be attended with so much diffi- 
culty. Could a voice from the skies more startle us with 
its emphasis, as it should declare, " It is better to trust in 



EELLS. 225 

the Lord, than to put confidence in princes," than do the 
tidings from Washington which have thrilled through, 
the nation ? We know not who can take the vacant 
places, whose incumbents have been so suddenly re- 
moved, with any safety to the government ; but God 
knows, and he can prepare the men who shall assume 
them, so that in the end we shall acknowledge these dark 
days to be full of blessing for the land ! Oh ! what a 
sight for men and angels, were this mighty nation, when 
it has demonstrated its unparalleled resources and power, 
when it commands the honor of all realms, to consign its 
Chief Magistrate to his grave, with the devout expression 
of dependence upon the great God, who can never die. 
u I will lift my e3'es unto the hills, from whence cometh 
my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made 
heaven and earth !" Is not this mysterious removal of 
the President and principal Secretary, just at this stage of 
our affairs, entirely in harmony with the conduct by 
Providence, of the whole struggle in which we have been 
engaged ? If I were looking for proof that there is a 
God, outside of revelation, in the history of men, I would 
not go beyond the events of the last four years, to be 
most abundantly convinced ; and the peculiarity which 
has most distinguished Mr. Lincoln, and has given him 
success, has been his purpose to follow the lead of events, 
and shape his course as they might indicate. Iso great 
device of statesmanship or military strategy was per- 
mitted to succeed, while God's design to discipline and 
educate the people, was in process of execution. There 
was a power behind the agents in the drama, guiding to 
points they did not intend to reach, and solving difficul- 
ties, at each advance, they knew not how to solve. Men 
were raised up in due time, as though specially endowed 
and appointed by God for their several stations, both civil 



226 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN". 

and military. And the wonderful events of the past 
week, notwithstanding the brilliant instrumentality of 
those who have been permitted to battle for them, are so 
signally marked by the interposition of God, and so 
much in excess of our expectations, that from the whole 
land rose the expression of thanks to him for the result. 
Who shall say that the mystery of this great bereavement 
we now experience will not have a solution equally, 
perhaps even more marked, as the continued proof that 
God is working his pleasure in the strange procession of 
our national affairs ? Let it be, that this assassination 
shall defeat the end it was intended to promote ; let it be, 
that it shall cause all classes among us to feel, as some 
have not seemed to feel heretofore, the atrocious nature 
of this attempt to destroy the government ; that it shall 
make a unit, in spirit and purpose, of those who might 
not otherwise be so united ; let it be, that there shall be 
a new, and more pervading, and more thorough sense of 
our dependence upon God, under which we shall be 
humbled and more completely prepared for his will, 
and we shall have still further occasion to acknowledge 
his hand ! 

He can take possession of him, whom this strange 
Providence elevates with such solemnity to the highest 
office, as he seems to have taken possession of him whom 
he resolved to make our great military chief, when he 
had, in a measure, lost the confidence of the people, by 
his submission to unworthy habits ; and can inspire him 
for his work, and bear him on to its completion. And 
there is no prayer we should utter with more earnestness, 
this day, than that he will do this. Should the great man 
whose life was also sought, be unable to survive his 
wounds, God can place our relations with foreign powers 
in the hands of some man, whom he can make strong, 



EELLS. 227 

and wise, and true ; though we have been so wont to feel 
that our Secretary of State is essential to the proper dis- 
position of these intricate questions. Oh ! brethren, the 
whole race of men is as nothing ; the great, the wise, the 
good, the mighty, perish ; none can by any means re- 
deem his brother, or give to God a ransom for him, that 
he shall not die! "The lathers, where are they? and 
the prophets, do they live forever?" Death heads the 
vast throng in which we are all gathered, and we are 
marching to the grave! "But the Lord liveth, and 
blessed be our rock, and let the God of our salvation be 
exalted !" 

The interests he has espoused, with which he is identi- 
fied, will never perish. His kingdom, which cannot be 
shaken, will remain and triumph. That life is not passed 
in vain which has been consecrated to his service. Xor 
is that trust idle, which from the borders of the tomb, 
where is laid a mortal co-worker, " lifts up its eyes to the 
hills," from whence help never fails to come. I cannot 
believe that any other than God is leading our nation 
through this wonderfully mingled experience of joy and 
grief — ot glory and humiliation. I cannot doubt that 
this day there are assembled hosts whose mingled feelings 
of praise and prayer are evidence that his discipline is 
not lost upon us. We needed enough prosperity to ren- 
der us fit for the position we can see but little above us — 
and enough continued chastening to render us willing 
that God shall be exalted as our Saviour and Help. There 
is promise of good in the subdued manner in which the 
nation will now move on to enter upon the blessings from 
which God had begun to roll away the clouds. There is, 
possibly, more auspicious music, for the world, and for 
future ages, in the requiem that rises to-day from our sor- 
rowing country than there would have been in the Te 



228 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

Deums and songs of exultation which should express our 
uninterrupted joy. There may be more hope for those 
who look for the supremacy of right and the overthrow 
of wrong, as the result of the war we have waged, now 
that a tinner purpose to deal justly with those who have 
instigated it, takes the place of the feeling that was ready 
to speak kindly, even of the unrepentiug traitors, who 
favor this horrible crime, as the first return for the mag- 
nanimity and kindness our noble-hearted President was 
glad to manifest. Certain it is we are not yet prepared 
to go back to the dark days of assassination as a mode 
of removing what may be opposed to us. Barbarism 
is still at a great distance from the people of this 
land. The foul spirit of which this act is the outburst 
has mistaken the pulse of the American heart. There 
have been more conversions to the extreme of hostility to 
treason within the last twenty-four hours, than any other 
means could have produced in a year. Its abettors have 
killed their best friend, and in doing so have raised a 
myriad arms that are moved by no such lenient soul, 
and this fact may be one evidence that God, who is the 
most relentless foe of infamy and crime, intends to over- 
rule even so dreadful a loss to the attainment of his ends. 
At all events, it is wise — it is our only recourse — to trust 
in him — to rest upon the conviction that after such a glo- 
rious manifestation of his returning favor, he does not 
design to mock our hopes. The cloud is fearful and dark 
under which we have passed, but the heavens are not all 
overcast, nor is there any less proof that the awful storm, 
which has been beating upon us, while the steady hand 
of him who is now dead, held the rudder, has for the most 
part died away. 

A Christian nation, even though bowed and over- 
whelmed by its sorrow, should never despair or lose con- 



EELLS. 229 

tidence in God ; much less should a nation that has such 
a history as ours. " Lift up your eyes to the hills from 
whence cometh your help." The eternal throne is not sha- 
ken, and he who sitteth thereon is as serene as he has 
ever been, while he urges on his grand designs. "Trust 
ye in the Lord forever, for in the Lord Jehovah is conso- 
lation and strength." 

No considerations like these, however, should lead us 
to put aside from us the most impressive truth which lias 
in this event so solemn an illustration, that our life on 
earth is hedged about by no circumstances that can guar- 
antee its contin nance. 

No qualities of nature which render us delightful to 
those around us — no pressure of necessity arising from 
our connection with momentous interests — no scenes of 
opening hope and prosperity, just coming within our vis- 
ion after a dark and stormy night of years — can keep 
back the ruthless messenger of death when his errand is 
given him. If any one could have been spared would it 
not have been the man to whom more hearts were ten- 
derly attached than any other in the nation ? Oh ! how 
we recall the many incidents that show how worthy he 
was of this love. One was related only yesterday, by a 
gentleman who was with him in a hospital at City Point: 
The President, though by no means well, resolved to 
visit and speak to every sick and wounded man in the hos- 
pital, of whom there were more than 6,000. While going 
from cot to cot, the agent of the Christian Commission 
came and begged of him that he would go, if but for a 
moment, to the tent of the Commission and see something 
of their work, but he replied : " No, sir ; I have great in- 
terest in the Christian Commission, but I have resolved 
that I owe most to these suffering heroes, and have only 
time to say a word to each before I must leave " — then 



230 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

passed on, and the poor men would try to raise them- 
selves in their couches as the President of the nation bent 
towards them and laid his hand upon their foreheads, or 
gently parted their hair, with some pleasant word of sym- 
pathy and cheer, till all were visited. 

And do you not remember that exquisite letter to the 
poor widow in New England, whose sons had all been 
killed in the war ? and that wonderful speech on the day 
after his election, when in the flush of a most remarkable 
victory, he said he took no pleasure in the defeat of any 
man, since it is principles, not men, whose success should 
be hailed with joy ? 

If the most kindly regard for others would ward off 
death, would not such a man have been spared ? Yet he 
has fallen and gone from earth. 

If the demands of teeming events could interpose, 
would not our nation's head, just now, be kept in his 
place 1 ISTo, my friends, there is no exception — there is 
no escape. The warning sounds from our capital over 
the land, and it should be heeded by every one of us ; 
we must all die — we may die in a moment, and when we 
think ourselves in the least danger. 

And how blessed, in connection with this truth, so sadly 
illustrated, is that other truth, of which we are reminded 
on this Easter Sunday, that upon the night which is thus 
gathered about us, Christ has brought the morning of 
hope and immortality to those who believe on him. We 
see the angels who have rolled away the stone from the 
door of the sepulchre. We look upor the vacant space 
where the body of Jesus had lain, and are assured that be- 
yond, where he has gone, there is a higher and nobler life. 
This assurance becomes our comfort and support. It lights 
up our own descent to the tomb. It makes the tombs of 
all believers only resting places where they sleep in Je- 



EELLS. !>3i 

ms, and tlieir spirits seem to greet us as we weep because 
the j are gone, with those words of hope : " Those who sleep 
in Jesus will God bring with him." In view of such a 
revelation in the midst of our national grief, the question 
lias intense interest, which was asked me many times yes- 
terday : " Is there evidence that our honored President 
was a Christian V That he was killed in a theatre is no 
proof that he was not, for in Washington, as in European 
courts, the officials are expected to attend these places of 
public resort, occasionally, merely to satisfy the desire of 
the people to see them, and Mr. Lincoln often expressed 
a preference to remain at home. On that fatal night it 
was only his unwillingness that the people should be dis- 
appointed which induced him to go ; yet all of us regret 
that his death occurred in such a place, whatever may 
have been the motive that took him there. Of his reli- 
gious views, however, indeed, of his religious convictions 
and experience, there is pleasing evidence. A promi- 
nent Xew York clergymen, who found it necessary to call 
upon him very early in the morning, learned that he was 
engaged in his private devotions, in which nothing was 
permitted to disturb him. A well known Christian lady 
was asked by him, about a year ago, what were the sim- 
plest proofs of change of heartj and as' she spoke particu- 
larly of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and renunciation 
of self, and comfort in prayer, he delighted her with the 
reply : " Then I may believe that I am really a Chris- 
tian." 

And you, no doubt, call to mind his answer to the man 
who closed a business interview with the direct question, 
" Mr. President, before we part, will you permit me to 
ask you, do you love Jesus ?" Mr. Lincoln rested his 
head on his hand a moment, then said, "When I left my 
home for Washington, I was not a Christian, though I 



232 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

desired the prayers of God's people ; when my little son 
died — the heaviest affliction of my life — I was not a 
Christian, though I deeply felt the need of grace and 
comfort. But when I walked among the graves of those 
thousands, who at Gettysburg had been swept into eter- 
nity, I resolved to give my heart to God ; and since then 
I do love Jesus !" Oh ! there is balm for the troubled 
hearts which bleed to-day, in such testimony as this, even 
though we know not the details of his experience. The 
nation mourns, yet rejoices. Over our whole domain is 
heard the dirge ; yet following close upon its strains, 
rises the Easter anthem, as we bid farewell for earth to 
one who will take his place among the most distinguished 
in the annals of the world ! 

My countrymen, let us rise to-day to a more distinct 
conviction that this nation is under the direction of God. 
Thousands of martyrs have been sacrificed at its altar ; 
and at last, when we thought no more would be de- 
manded, we have been obliged to yield the most illus- 
trious of them all. In this fresh baptism of blood, let us 
consecrate it to Jehovah, and hold ourselves in readiness 
for any demands such consecration may make of us. Let 
us feel that for this brief life we can make no worthier or 
more valuable contribution to our race, than our resolute, 
sincere devotion to the interests of right, liberty, and re- 
ligion. Nay ! there can be no more worthy or valuable 
treasure laid up for the life eternal ! The life eternal ! 
how near to its confines do we every moment stand ! 
God grant that all of us may be prepared, through his 
grace, when the summons shall come to us, to leave for- 
ever our stations and our work on earth, for the service 
and the bliss of heaven 1 



SERMON III. 



REV. ELBERT S. PORTER, D. D. 

"" What aileth the people that they weep?" — 1. Samuel xi. 5. 

A great indignity had been offered Israel by Nahash 
the cruel Ammonite. When the people heard of it they 
wept, and Saul, beholding the public sorrow, exclaimed : 
" What aileth the people that they weep V When told 
the cause thereof the Spirit of God came upon Saul, and 
his anger was kindled greatly. 

High crimes always awaken corresponding indignation. 
For there is that in human nature which arises into flame 
when touched by the presence of a flagrant wrong. The 
instinct of justice which has been implanted in the hu- 
man soul by the Author of all justice, is quick in its spon- 
taneous protest against every form of palpable outrage. 
A woe is denounced against them that call good evil, or 
evil good, for when men lose ability or willingness to dis- 
tinguish between right and wrong, to approve the one and 
condemn the other, then society is fatally wounded and 
vice becomes the equal of virtue ; and it is the Spirit 
of a just God which kindles a holy indignation in the hu- 
man mind against crimes, whether committed against na- 
tions, communities, classes, or individuals. It may be 

233 



234: DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

taken for a maxim that a righteous abhorrence of malig- 
nant and criminal passion is an essential element of pop- 
ular virtue. Where this is wanting, a nation has parted 
from all integrity of feeling. It has fallen into the 
depths of moral putridity, and rots in the infectious at- 
mosphere generated by abominable atheism. So long as 
men retain God in their thoughts and reverence him as 
the Supreme Lawgiver, they must cry out against com- 
mon offences and extraordinary crimes. They forfeit their 
noblest instincts when they come short of this duty. 

It is not strange, therefore, that the assassination of 
the President of the United States should awaken 
feelings of horror, and evoke the indignation of every 
right-minded man. That it has done this, admits of no 
question. Never, since its beginning, until yesterday, 
has this nation felt, so profoundly as it does now, the an- 
guish of a sacred indignation, because of a monstrous, 
and, in our country, hitherto unknown crime. This in- 
dignation is none the less because it is, for a moment, sti- 
fled by tears and sobs of genuine sorrow. Need we ask, 
" Why do the people weep ?" 

Whatever be the reason, one thing is certain, that there 
has been no attempt to feign or affect sorrow. It has been 
as spontaneous as light, and as universal too. There was 
no waiting on yesterday for proclamations, or resolutions, 
or any of the customary methods of forming and shaping 
opinions. Men were speechless with grief, and pallid in 
the presence of a great calamity. Business there could 
be none, for the people had no heart to engage in traffic. 
They looked into each other's faces and conversed only 
through their falling tears. Funeral woe hung over our 
cities. An appalling blow had paralyzed the popular 
heart, and it communed in bitterness with its own woe, 
waiting to be comforted. Undoubtedly the manner of 



PORTER. 235 

the President's death gave particular character and shape 
to the all-pervasive grief, and yet we may ask whether, 
if he had been allowed to end his useful life upon a quiet 
bed in this period of our national conflict, there would 
not have been an unusual lamentation over his death. 

He is done with earth. His record is made ; his deeds 
have passed into history, and he will be judged like other 
men who have occupied conspicuous public positions. It 
is too soon yet to undertake to estimate his services or to 
measure his influence. This generation must first pass 
away before a just and impartial criticism shall assign 
him his true place among the illustrious benefactors of 
mankind. 

When on the 4th of March, 1861, Abraham Lincoln 
became President of these United States, he ceased to be 
the chieftain of a political party. Perils, great, vast, and 
immediate, were around him. He could no longer give 
up to party what he owed to the whole country. From 
that moment it became his supreme care to do what 
seemed right and necessary for the preservation of the Un- 
ion and the maintenance of its just governmental author- 
ity. In the excitement and confusion of the times it was 
not in the power of any fallible man to adopt measures 
exactly suited to please the prej udices, the passions, and 
the interests of all. During our most tranquil periods 
the high office of President has been compassed with im- 
mense difficulties. If its dignity is great its responsibil- 
ities are far greater. In a republic like this, where opin- 
ions rave and rage like tempests over the deep, our chief 
magistrates, even in the more quiet times of the repub- 
lic, have never found themselves free from grave embar- 
rassments, or threatening dangers. But the difficulties of 
administration experienced by his predecessors were as 
nothing compared with those which beset Mr. Lincoln. 



236 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

Secession, long plotted, thoroughly organized and defiant, 
had already brought the national government to the 
verge of ruin. Men were everywhere asking whereunto 
will all this infernal mischief come? The popular mind 
was without definite convictions concerning what ought 
to be done. The leaders of public opinion, following 
their themes, their abstractions, and their low ambitions, 
held few doctrines in common. The President was then, 
perforce, obliged to take counsel only from his oath of 
office, and to go forward, trusting in God and the recti- 
tude of the cause he had been elected to defend. 

Looking back over the four years of his official history, 
it is possible to detect some mistakes ; but these mistakes 
will be very differently defined and described by opposite 
schools of opinion. The criticisms to which his adminis- 
tration of affairs has been subjected by avowed political 
dissenters, have not, perhaps, in the main, been any more 
ungenerous or embarrassing than those emanating from 
adverse faction, in the party claiming to be his particular 
supporters. I allude to this only to remind you of the 
immense difficulties which from the first have ever beset 
his public life. Yet he seemed to be oblivious of parties 
and of party factions alike. lie inquired for the men 
who were willing to stand by their country, and them he 
called into civil and into military service. He had one 
thing to do — to save the country — to preserve the Union 
— and who will or can doubt that he gave himself wholly 
and entirely to that work ? If he had been able to fore- 
see all things, he might have avoided some alleged errors. 
Had he been possessed of divine intelligence, he would 
have timed and adjusted measures with a skill forbidding 
criticism. Yet after all allowance is made for any real 
or imaginary imperfection of official judgment, it must 
still be confessed that the President who, under God, con- 



PORTER. 237 

ducted tliis nation through a great war with a powerful 
foe, and within sight of returning peace, will ever be 
honored and held worthy of honor by those who consider 
the magnitude of his task and the magnitude of the re- 
suits it has secured. 

I think all candid men, ol whatever shade of opinion, 
will concur with me in this estimate of the official career 
of our lamented President. That he did, or tried to do, 
whatever seemed to him right and expedient for the sal- 
vation of our government, will be readily admitted even 
b} r those who were free to censure particular acts. Mr. 
Lincoln was not a fanatic, nor a theorist. He had no 
hobbies. His mind was broad, comprehensive, and prac- 
tical. His motto seemed to be that of Edmund Burke, 
"A true statesman must deal with practical affairs in a 
practical way." This furnishes a key to his policy. In 
the summer of 1862, I passed an hour with the President 
in his summer retreat at the Old Soldiers' Home. There 
were but three others present, and the conversation was 
free and unrestrained. He spoke of slavery as a thing 
which had grown up with the nation and grown into it — 
said that one section was no more responsible than another 
for its original existence here, and that the whole nation 
having suffered from it, ought to share in efforts for its 
gradual removal. His mind at the time was impressed 
with the necessity of adopting a scheme of gradual and 
compensated emancipation. That scheme, however, found 
no favor among the insurgents, and was violently con- 
demned by certain organs of opinion at the North. 
When, however, foreign intervention became imminent, 
the President issued as a war measure the proclamation 
of freedom to the slaves. It was a measure concerning 
which men have differed — but that it was believed by the 
President to be necessary for the preservation of the 



23S DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

Union, I have no manner of doubt, and since the South- 
ern people have themselves come to the conclusion that 
slavery as an institution is dead, and have by their own 
acts helped it to its end, there is no longer reason at this 
day to revive disputes, which have ceased to possess any 
practical utility. But whatever men may choose to think or 
say respecting the official acts or intellectual characteristics 
of our late President, one thing must be held as true by all 
— and that is, that the popular confidence in his moral 
integrity has well-nigh approached sublimity. That con- 
fidence has been as a wall of defence round about us. I 
shall not enter into particulars illustrative of this. You 
must all remember that the war has produced through all 
its vicissitudes a tremendous strain upon popular feeling 
of adverse kinds. There have been ambitious men not a 
few, planning and plotting for their own advancement, 
and they have built up little parties around them, whose 
interest could be subserved by destroying confidence in 
Mr. Lincoln. But while they had always some success, 
after all, the people would fall back upon that plain, un- 
pretending, every-day sort of a man, who maintained his 
faith in God unimpaired, and trusted that the future 
would reverse all the misjudgments of the present. The 
lesson of such a political example of unimpeachable in- 
tegrity is worth a great deal to this nation. 

Several of our Presidents and statesmen have risen from 
obscure life. They w T ere not born to the silver spoon and 
silken bed of luxury. Jackson, the son of a poor Irish 
widow ; Henry Clay, a poor white of the South ; Yan 
Buren, a lad of humble means, have filled important pages 
in the history of the world. Mr. Lincoln was born in 
Kentucky, and passed all his early, and some of his ma- 
turer years in a hard conflict with poverty. This, by 
some, has been used to stigmatize and defame him. But 



POP.TER. 2?> ( ,» 

right-thinking men will find in it occasion to bestow upon 
him double honor. It is not difficult for the favored few 
to gain a full share of worldly success. Born to wealth, 
to social position — surrounded by friends, ever ready to 
bestow or secure patronage — they have the current with 
them. They do but float down its surface to the harbor 
they desire. But the many are poor, have few friends to 
help them, and they must not only struggle against wind 
and tide, but at the same time endure the scornful jeers 
and malevolent opposition of the more favored mortals. 
No poor boy is allowed to make his way unless he has 
heart, and courage, and purpose enough to disregard the 
contempt of supercillious wealth, the secret malignity of 
interested rivals, together with all the other common or 
uncommon obstacles in the road to success. Our free 
institutions embody the principles of a Christian democ- 
racy. The Bible favors no class distinctions. It teaches 
that all are required to use what talents they possess, and 
that each shall be compensated according to his fidelity in 
their use. And that is what our political s} T stem also 
says. In the world it is not so. The poor remain poor — 
the ignorant remain ignorant, and the rich heap up riches. 
This at least is the rule where aristocracy bears sway. It 
is, thank God, not so here. Our churches, our schools, 
our newspapers, our whole life, inculcate the doctrine of 
Christ, respecting the right of each man to rise in intelli- 
gence, virtue, dignity, and influence. Against this life, 
secession lifted its murderous hand in the beginning, and 
to add to the " sum of all villainies," has assassinated the 
President. I do not wish to employ the language of pas- 
sion. But I hate, with a perfect hatred, this infernal spirit 
of rebellion which has plunged our land iiito mourning, 
filled hundreds of thousands of graves with the bodies of 
martyrs slain for their loyalty to principles taught us hj 



240- DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

the Son of God. Can there be a doubt respecting this 
issue % The American people are to be executors of the 
unrecorded will and testament of their generous, humane 
and patriotic President. Let them be true to their trust. 
Do any undervalue the inestimable privileges of our 
American institutions, let them look abroad and see how 
" privilege " oppresses the many. The few are masters of 
the people. Here the many have advantages which as- 
sure them opportunity of being all they have capacity to 
become. Abraham Lincoln was the representative of 
popular rights, manhood, and liberty. The people weep 
because they loved him in character as a President, and 
as a man. The assassin who struck him, assailed every 
loyal citizen through him — and dealt a murderous blow 
upon the nation, in murdering its head. We have our 
duties. We must stand by the successor of Mr. Lincoln. 
Andrew Johnson is worthy of our support. He is now 
our Chief Magistrate — and as he wears the mantle of his 
immediate predecessor, so let us give him the support of 
our prayers and our loyal devotion to the cause he serves. 
Henceforth the name, fame, and virtues of each are in the 
keeping of so much of the world as delight to honor rare 
ability, unimpeachable integrity, and fervent devotion to 
the rights of all mankind. Washington was indeed the 
father of his country, and some future Bancroft shall re- 
cord on the page of history that Abraham Lincoln was the 
political savior of what Washington and his compatriots 
had founded. We weep, but we shall dry our tears in 
the sunlight of Hope. The President is no more — but 
the Republic lives. Let it be perpetual. 



SERMON XIII. 



REV. A. P. ROGERS, D. D. 



" Shall there he evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?" — Amos 
iii. 6. 

" Be still, and know that I am God." — Psalm xlvi. 10. 

A sudden and awful calamity has fallen upon the na- 
tion. It has come like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. 
It has no precedent in all our history, and we reel and 
stagger under the unexpected and mighty catastrophe. 
In the midst or our grateful joy for victory, in the midst 
of our congratulations at the prospect of peace, the sad 
and startling intelligence which has flashed along the 
wires from the capital of our nation, has prostrated us in 
the depths of affliction, and pierced the great heart of 
loval America with unutterable anguish. For the first 
time in the history of our fair country, the murderous 
hand of the assassin has been successfully lifted against 
the Chief Magistrate of the nation, and our strong staff 
is broken in a moment. Passing successfully through the 
tremendous ordeal of his first official term, bearing bur«= 
dens and meeting responsibilities such as none of his pre- 
decessors had ever known, with a manly courage, a ge- 
nial patience and entire single-heartedness, a wonderful 
il 241 



242 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

wisdom, and an honest devotion to the country which 
commanded the respect of his enemies, and surpassed the 
expectations of his friends, he has been struck down by a 
cruel, dastardly blow, in the very hour of success, and 
amid a grand chorus of national thanksgiving and praise. 
Oh ! how suddenly has this grand national anthem given 
place to a dirge of wailing and woe ! In how brief a 
moment has our glorious flag, which floated so proudly 
from ten thousand heights in token of triumph, been 
veiled in mourning, not, thank God, in defeat and dis- 
grace, but in the deepest national anguish. Who among 
us all anticipated such a catastrophe? Among all the 
possible contingencies of our eventful times, who appre- 
hended this ? And who of us can resist for a time the 
pressure of this terrible calamity ? I confess to you, my 
brethren, that I come to you with a heavy heart to-day. 
Never since that fearful blow which brought desolation 
to my own household in the first month of my ministry 
here have I come to this pulpit with such a lingering step, 
with such a burdened spirit. I have never feared for my 
country's final triumph and safety. I will not fear for 
her now. But a dispensation so unexpected, so mysteri- 
ous, so overwhelming in itself, its circumstances, and its 
possible results, may well make us tremble and bow our- 
selves before the mighty hand of God. I confess to you 
that I have shrunk from meeting you in this house of God 
to-day. I had anticipated and prepared for a very differ- 
ent occasion. I had hoped to welcome Easter Sunday 
under circumstances grateful alike to the Christian and 
the patriot, and with anthems of joy, and lessons of Holy 
Scripture, appropriate to this blessed Christian festival, 
to have greeted you in the sanctuary. But the providence 
of God has inaugurated a different method, and altered 
the key-note of the service of this hour. I know that 



ROGEKS. 24:3 

there is but one thought uppermost in the minds of all 
who have assembled here. It is not the thought of Easter, 
not the thought of resurrection, life, gladness, and hope, 
which, would express itself in a hallelujah of grateful 
praise. It is the thought of the awful event which has 
clothed a nation in mourning, and exchanged the garment 
of praise for the spirit of heaviness. From the capital of 
our land, where our Chief Magistrate lies in death, the 
victim of a foul and fiendish deed, comes a sad, stern 
message, which we cannot ignore. It has gone over the 
lightning's track to every city and village from the At- 
lantic to the Pacific. It has hushed the accents of joy 
and triumph ; it has oppressed the national heart with 
sorrow ; and there is probably not a pulpit in the loyal 
States to-day which has not taken its key-note from this 
calamity. For myself, my thoughts, so far as I could 
rally them, have turned to that great truth, of the sover- 
eignty of God in calamity, which is so forcibly illustrated 
in this direful hour. Atheism has no consolation to offer 
us now. Philosophy is cold and comfortless. Faith must 
find something firm and durable to rest on amid these 
dissolving shadows of earth and time. " Shall there be 
evil in a city and the Lord hath not done it ?" Above 
the wailings of a stricken nation, above the tide of disap- 
pointed hope, outraged sensibility, or vindictive passion, 
the awful voice of Jehovah is heard, saying : " Be still, 
and know that I am God." 

There is no lesson so hard to learn as that of divine 
sovereignty and human dependence. Yet there is none 
which is inculcated so constantly in the teachings of the 
Bible, none illustrated so sternly in the dispensations of 
Providence. ISTo man can study the dealings of God 
with men, either in the operations of his providence, or 
in the plan of salvation, without seeing that they tend to 



244 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN, 

this end, " That the lofty looks of man shall be humbled, 
and the haughtiness of man shall be bowed down, and 
the Lord himself exalted in that day." Creatures of a 
day, as we are, whose habitation is in the dust, and who 
are crushed before the moth, whose strength is weakness, 
and whose wisdom is folly, we often presumptuously rebel 
against the absolute sovereignty of an infinitely perfect 
God, and desire to find out some more palatable and less 
humbling reason for occurring events than his single, 
sovereign, indisputable will. Whenever we can discover 
what are called second causes, which seem to be adequate 
to the effects which are occurring around us, we go no 
farther in our investigations ; we confine ourselves to 
these, and forget that great Being who sits behind them 
all, who " doeth according to his will in the armies of 
heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth ; and 
none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest 
thou?" 

But this foolish and wicked forgetfulness of God's sov- 
ereignty is sometimes rebuked with amazing distinctness 
and awful severity. Events sometimes occur in our 
world in isolated instances or in a dreadful succession, 
which confound our sagacity, baffle our shrewdness, cast 
contempt on our philosophy, contradict our experience, 
abash our presumption, humble our pride, disappoint our 
hope, and drive us irresistibly to the very footstool of our 
Maker, wringing out from our bewildered and breaking 
hearts the exclamation, " It is the Lord ; let him do as 
seemeth him good !" 

Such are the stern lessons of this day. Our national 
history during the last four years — a history of treason, 
cruelty, war, and misery, written in tears and blood, and 
culminating in this last awful tragedy, ought to bring us 
all to our Maker's feet, impressing on every heart the 



ROGERS. 245 

great fact of his sovereignty as the only solution of the 
mystery which envelopes it, and the only ground of hope 
that it will work together for our good. 

We cannot be indifferent to such events as those which 
have, in such an awful succession, passed before us. Such 
would neither be the dictate of reason nor religion. It 
would be rebuked by the admonitions of God's "Word, 
and by the example of our Divine Teacher. In the dis- 
charge of his earthly ministry, he adapted his instruc- 
tions, in the best sense, to the peculiarities of the times. 
" He addressed himself to men's present duties, and their 
present sins and snares, and the passing events of the 
day, or the scenery of the spot where he taught fur- 
nished him with ready and appropriate illustrations. 
The news of a cruel butchery, or a melancholy calamity ; 
the tidings of the Galileans slaughtered over their sacri- 
fices, or of the unhappy victims in Siloam crushed by a 
falling tower ; the news that for the time was the burden 
of all tongues, and made all ears to tingle, was seized by 
him as affording the occasion of riveting some keen truth 
upon the memory and conscience of the multitude." 
And so it is both the dictate of duty and piety to look care- 
fully at the record of passing events, to learn from their 
varied history how God governs his world, and orders 
human destiny. " For all that occurs in his wide empire, 
from the fall of a leaf to the extinction of a race — from 
the death of a sparrow to the blotting out of a star — is 
only the fiat of Him who is from everlasting to everlast- 
ing God, whose counsel shall stand, and who will do all 
his pleasure." 

The teachings of an appalling calamity, ouch as has 
just occurred, are very impressive and solemn on the 
great point of the absolute sovereignty of God. The ap- 
pearance of second causes is sometimes apt to obscure 



246 DEATH OP PRESIDENT LINCOLN". 

this sublime truth. Had our lamented President died by 
the process of ordinary disease, we should have seen a 
sufficient explanation of the catastrophe in the immediate 
instrument, and would have been content, perhaps, to 
leave the matter there. But his sudden, unexpected, aw- 
ful death by the cowardly hand of a vile assassin, drives 
the bewildered and affrighted mind directly back to this 
great eternal truth, and forces an appalled and stricken 
people to reflect that God is sovereign on his throne, and 
that- even the machinations and crimes of wicked men 
are but the agents of his will. He is able to make even 
the wrath of man to praise him, while the remainder 
thereof he can restrain. 

Yet the catastrophe itself, so fearful and overwhelm- 
ing, is for the moment a staggering blow to the faith and 
submission of the tried arid tempted soul. The climax, 
as it is, of all that is dreadful for four long and bloody 
years, it is not easy for us to acquiesce in its wisdom, its 
justice, or its goodness. The mind, stunned and crushed 
by a sense of loss and desolation, finds itself asking, as it 
views only the stupendous crime and its fearful results, 
" Is there a sovereign God in the heavens? Is he wise 
and just ? Are these the methods of his administration ?" 
It seems, at first, a cold and harsh way of solving the 
difficulties that encircle an event like this to refer it to 
the sovereign will of God, and say it is because he chooses 
that it shall be. May not the infidel find his triumph in 
scenes like these, as lie points to the dreadful history, and 
sneeringly says, " Behold your God ?" 

JSTo, no, my friends ; if we take from this catastrophe 
the idea that it is ordered by a sovereign God, we take 
from it the only star which relieves its fearful darkness. 
We abandon the whole scene to the undisputed sway of 
gloom and despair. What if it be a heavy, yea, an over- 



ROGERS, 247 

whelming: stroke? Is it not more tolerable from a wise 
Father's hand than from that ot a malignant foe ? If yon 
take away God and God in his sovereignty from this 
scene, able to have prevented it, and yet allowing it to 
occur, what can yon put in its place that can better 
satisfy or support the mind ? "Will the doctrine of an in- 
evitable fate ; will the dogma of a lawless chance afford 
more light and comfort ? ]STo ! Let us enthrone above 
these scenes of apparent confusion or arbitrary infliction, 
a sovereign God, a God of wisdom, a God of love, a God 
of power, who sees the end from the beginning, and or- 
ders all things according to the counsel of his will ; and 
here, at least, we have an anchorage for faith — a place 
where she can cling, and look up amid the jarring ele- 
ments, and say, "Even so Father, for so it seemed good 
in thy sight." 

So far, then, from the truth is the assertion that the 
sovereignty of God furnishes a cold and barren source of 
comfort in a calamity like this, that, on the other hand, 
we find in this fact great consolation. Who would not 
prefer, if called on to submit uncomplainingly and abso- 
lutely to the most trying circumstances and dealings, that 
these should be ordered by an intelligent, just, and good 
Being — one whose unerring wisdom enabled him to know 
the best things, whose infinite love inclined him to choose 
them, and whose unlimited power enabled him to accom- 
plish them ? Who would not choose that a Father's hand 
should pour the bitter cup which he was to drink to the 
dregs? h God be taken from our prosperity we may 
bear it, but who or what can supply his place in the days 
of adversity? Oh! to be taught that a sovereign God 
rides on the billow, and directs the storm which sweeps' 
our precious things away, though we be left beggared and 
forlorn, is a lesson worth to the tried and tempted soul all 



248 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

that it can cost ; and there are some dispensations of God's 
providence that seem especially calculated to teach just 
this lesson. May not this be one of them ? Is it not adapt- 
ed to impress on the thoughtful mind the fact that " God 
giveth no account of his matters ?" We are astounded at 
the suddenness of the calamity. "We are heart-broken by 
its severity. We wonder, we suffer, we bleed, but still 
faith rallies where reason is staggered, and says, " Clouds 
and darkness are round about him ; yet righteousness and 
judgment are the habitation of his throne." His path is 
in the great waters, and we cannot follow its windings, 
but we know that his feet are there. Those deep waters 
go over us ; they bury our fondest hopes ; they swallow 
up our most precious things ; our idols all go down into 
the abyss ; all his waves and billows go over us. But the 
rushing t«ide cannot sweep away from us the conviction 
that the storm is guided by infinite wisdom and perfect 
goodness, and that the crested billows are rolling on God's 
great and wise designs to a glorious consummation. And 
that is a cruel hand that would tear away from a believing 
soul this refuge of faith, this anchor of hope. Plant 
above that awful scene at the capital, an inexorable Fate 
guiding that deadly ball ; let a senseless and frantic chance 
triumph in that awful hour, and have you given help or 
comfort to this stricken nation mourning over this her 
sorest bereavement? O no. Give the weeping nation a 
God, though his way be in the sea, and his path in the 
great waters ; give us a God, though clouds and darkness 
are round about him ; give us a God, though his ways are not 
as our ways, nor his thoughts as our thoughts. If you would 
not wrench away from this bereaved people their greatest 
stay and solace in this dark hour, let them listen to the 
voice of the great Jehovah as he speaks to us from behind 
the cloud, saying, " Be still, and know that I am God !" 



SOGERS. 249 

Let ns then be reminded, first of all, by this awful 
event, that "the Lord reigneth." We are in great dan- 
ger of looking first at the secondary cause of calamity. 
We reason that if this or that had not occurred ; if one 
expedient or another had been adopted ; if something had 
been different from what it was, the catastrophe might 
have been averted. But these things did not occur; 
these expedients were not so used. It did not please God 
to order it thus, and this is the only account which we 
can give of the matter. To my own mind, this fearful 
event, in all its horrors, is full of teaching on that great 
point which lies at the foundation of all religion, but 
which men are so prone constantly to forget, that there is a 
sovereign God in the heavens, to whom we must all bow, 
and all must give account. It has been well said that 
" some of the judgments of Divine Providence need no 
interpreter. Sorrow and guilt, in the natural- workings 
of man's conscience, and in the general estimate of man- 
kind, are closely conjoined. And there are times when a 
nabob perishes before the altar he has desecrated, or an 
Uzzah is blasted before the ark, or when the storm of fire 
comes clown upon the cities of the plain, or the ark of 
Noah rides on the waters past the drowning sinners who 
had derided his warnings ; times when God's judgments 
follow man's transgressions so closely that he who runs 
may read the purport of his visitation, and see in the pe- 
culiar guilt of the sufferers the reason of their peculiar 
fate." But it is not so in this case. Our honored and 
lamented President has not perished in this awful way, 
because he was a sinner above all them that dwelt in the 
land. This is no judgment upon him for great personal 
guilt. Doubtless, he, like all of us, was a sinner, and 
needed, as we all need, the pardoning grace of God, 

through Jesus Christ, for his personal sins. But no can- 

11* 



250 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

did mind will ever look upon this event as a judgment on 
him. He has come to the grave full of honors, at the 
zenith of his fame, and the cruel circumstances of his 
death will only make his name more illustrious, and his 
memory more dear. To our sympathies and reasoning, 
it seems like a hard thing that so great and good a man 
should have fallen by a murderer's hand ; that his honest 
and generous heart, which had no feeling, even for those 
who had so bitterly reviled him, and made such deadly 
war upon the country which he ruled, but of conciliation 
and kindness, should have been stilled in its life-beating 
by an assassin's hand in such a malignant and cowardly 
way. It seems hard that the wearing toils and anxieties 
of four such dreadful years as composed his first official 
term, should not have been followed by a term of success- 
ful reconstruction of this divided land. But all this must 
be left with the wisdom of that God who has ordered all 
his history, and gives no account of any of his matters. 

The great lesson, therefore, which I desire to take to 
my own soul from this stunning calamity, is that which 
is appropriately presented in the text : " Be still, and 
know that I am God I" I think it a very needful an$ prof- 
itable lesson. I find myself daily prone to be forgetful of 
the fact that God reigns in the earth, and will do all his 
pleasure. This is unfavorable to that humility, faith, and 
submission which are not only so appropriate to the rela- 
tions of creatures like us, but which are so constantly de- 
manded by the peculiar exigencies of our earthly state. 
We cannot be too deeply impressed with this truth. It 
is not only needful to stimulate us to duty and excite us 
to humility ; but it is sometimes the only truth on which 
we can lean, when unexpected and crushing calamities, 
like this come upon us. 

But while Christian faith recognizes in this deplorable 



ROGERS. 251 

event the hand of a sovereign God, and bows in submis- 
sion to the fiat of his will, still this must not be construed 
into anything like indifference to the crime itself. " It 
must needs be that offences come, but woe unto that man 
by whom the offence cometh." This deed is a brutal, das- 
tardly, atrocious murder. Think of the circumstances. 
A scene of festivity, to which the kindness of the Presi- 
dent's heart, unwilling to disappoint an expectant assem- 
bly, rather than any special love for such a place, had 
carried him ; surrounded by his family and friends ; 
unarmed, and unconscious; thus, he meets the vile as- 
sassin's blow ! The occupant of the most distinguished 
place on earth — in the midst of the triumphs and joy of 
a nation for whose best interests he had toiled and prayed 
and spent anxious days and sleepless nights for four long 
years of strife and T)lood — just four years from the trag- 
edy of Fort Sumter, and when its dishonored flag was 
floating again in triumph over its dismantled walls ; on a 
day dear to the Christian world as commemorating the 
death of the Saviour of the world — these were the cir- 
cumstances which stamped its fearful character on this 
deed of horror and of shame. It was no sudden ebulli- 
tion of insane fury ; the murderer had cherished his pur- 
pose for weeks and months, and coolly waited his time 
and opportunity — not alone, but with a fellow-fiend who 
could attack a helpless invalid in his bed w T ith the mur- 
derous knife. Such is the character of this deed, which 
has no parallel in the annals of crime. I say, before God, 
that such a deed is worthy of hell itself, and nothing 
should be allowed to screen its guilty perpetrators, and 
their equally guilty abettors and friends, whoever and 
wherever they may be, from the fate they so richly de- 
serve. This is no time to talk about leniency and concilia- 
tion ; there has been already too much of this, when the 



252 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

spirit which can apply the incendiary's torch to peaceful 
cities, and use the murderer's weapons on unarmed and 
helpless men, is rampant in our midst. Is not this the 
real spirit of those who have been in arms against us .? 
Does it not find its counterpart in the black record of An- 
dersonville, and Salisbury, and the Libby Prison '? Is not 
this the essential spirit of treason ? Is not this the legiti- 
mate teaching of the barbarous and barbarizing institu- 
tion of slavery ? Yes! This is the way in which the 
Confederate government makes war. This is the method 
of the slave power. 

Then I say, before God, make no terms with rebellion 
short of its utter extinction, and of that accursed system 
which has been the cause and groundwork of rebellion. 
Pursue it as long as a vestige of it remains. Let every 
loyal citizen register a vow before high heaven that noth- 
ing short of the utter crushing out of treason and its cause, 
at any expense of treasure and of blood, shall satisfy him. 
Had I twenty sons, and all as dear as the gallant boy who 
sleeps in his bloody grave on the field of Gaines' Mill, 1 
would give them all, and lead them myself to the fight, 
if it were needed to ensure the utter extermination of a 
rebellion so causeless in its origin, so atrocious in its 
spirit, so malignant in its methods, so obnoxious to the 
curse of God and the abhorrence of all good men. 

And finally, my brethren, let not this dreadful catas- 
trophe lead you to despond in regard to your country. 
. President Lincoln is dead, but the republic lives — aye, 
God lives, and is sovereign on his throne. He makes the 
wrath of man to praise him, and can restrain the remain- 
der thereof. Our President has gone suddenly to his 
grave ; but he goes to sleep in an honored grave, heading 
the noble army of patriot martyrs who have given their 
lives to their countiy. He has done a great and good 



ROGERS. 253 

work for the nation; he rests from his labors, and his 
works will follow him. The nation are his mourners, 
and will enshrine his memory in their hearts. It is not 
tpo much to say that all his work was done, for " man is 
immortal till his work is done !" There is good reason to 
hope that this fearful summons did not find him unpre- 
pared to meet his God. It seems as if he could ill be 
spared ; but learn a lesson from the history of your father- 
land, ye children of Holland ancestors. It was a darker 
day for the Netherlands when William of Orange fell by 
the assassin's hand than for our country now, and yet how 
nobly that little republic weathered that terrible storm 
which, broke her strong staff and her beautiful rod. So 
we need not despair of our republic. Our fathers' God is 
ours ! He is teaching us to trust in his everlasting arm. 
In the very flush of our triumph we are taught how vain 
is the help of man — a hard lesson for this people to learn, 
but which God has determined to teach us ; for he will 
have all the glory of our deliverance, and his glory he 
will not give to another. Humble yourselves under the 
mighty hand of God. Pray, oh pray for his blessing on 
him who, untried, enters upon the arduous and delicate 
duties of the" presidential chair. The prayers of God's 
people made President Lincoln what he was to the nation. 
It is not beyond the power of prayer to make President 
Johnson even more of a blessing to us in the clays that 
are to come. 

Let the nation bow itself before God, who hath smitten, 
and he will raise us up. Through the darkness of the 
present I see the brightness of the future as the sun in 
hea,ven. I see the picture of a glorious land, her sins 
purged away, every blot removed from her stainless 
escutcheon — the home of civilization, liberty, and Chris- 
tianity — a beacon light among the nations of the earth, 



254 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

the friend of the oppressed, the sun of the benighted, the 
messenger of a resurrection to all the slumbering hopes of 
humanity, the great benediction of God to the world. 
Oh ! if this picture may be a reality, and if this awful 
catastrophe which has clothed us in mourning shall but 
help on the grand consummation, then, indeed, our la- 
mented President will have blessed his country and the 
world far more in death than in his life, and this last cli- 
max of agony and blood will not have been reached in 
vain. 



SERMON XIV. 



REV. S. D. BURCHARD, D. D. 



"And by it, he "being dead yet speaketh." — Hebrews xi. 4. 

The chapter from which our text is taken contains a re- 
cord of the achievements of faith in the days of the pa- 
triarchs — a record designed to stimulate us in these far-off 
ages of the Christian Church. 

"By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent 
sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he 
was righteous, God testifying of his gifts ; and by it he 
being dead yet speaketh." 

Abel, the accepted worshipper and martyred brother, 
still lives in his faith and speaks in his example, declaring 
that sin can be pardoned only through the propitiation of 
Christ, of which his offering was the appropriate and sig- 
nificant type. Though this is the personal and primary re- 
ference of this brief sentence, it mav be regarded as con- 
taining a general principle — a lesson to the living, as well 
as a touching memorial of the dead. 

The world is full of voices — the voices of those that 
have lived, but are gone. 

Their utterences did not cease when their voice was no 

longer heard. 

255 



256 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

They have a continuous oratory, awakening emotions 
and memories in the nursery, around the family hearth- 
stone, and in the places of public concourse. Does not 
the voice of the little child still linger in your dwelling, 
though its form is no longer visible ? Do not its familiar 
toys, its unused dress, its well-remembered smile, its last 
kiss speak in a tone of pathos such as no living voice 
could articulate % 

Our fathers and mothers may be gone. Long years 
may have passed since the tie of affection was sundered, 
and we wept disconsolate orphans over their graves, but 
the father speaks still in his manly words and deeds, and 
the mother in the closet of her devotions. 

The great — the good — the loving live ; they are invis- 
ible, yet life is filled with their presence. They are with 
us in the sacredness and seclusion of home — in the paths 
of society, and in the crowded assemblies of men. They 
speak to us from the lonely wayside — from the council 
halls of the nation, and from the sanctuaries that echo to 
the voice of prayer. 

Go where we will and the dead are with us. Their 
well-remembered tones mingle with the voices of nature — 
with the sound of the autumn leaf — with the jubilee shout 
of the spring time. 

Every man who departs leaves a voice and an influence 
behind him. 

The graves of the peasant and of the prince are alike 
vocal. The sepulchral vault in which the remains of our 
beloved President were laid the other day, as well as the 
cold, wet, opening earth in which the humble laborer was 
buried, utters a silent yet all-subduing oratory. From 
every one of the dead a voice is heard in the living circles 
of men, which the knell of their departure does not 
drown, which the earth and the green sod do not muffle, 



BURCHAED. 



257 



which neither deafness nor distance, nor anything that 
man may devise, can possibly extinguish. The cemetery 
often speaks more thrilling accents than the senate house, 
and the chamber of the dead is often more eloquent 
than the council hall of the living. You perceive the 
sentiment then, which we gather from the text, that the 
influence of a man in his deeds and words while living 
survive him, so that he being dead yet speaketh, and his 
words and influence may abide forever through the ages. 

Let this thought engage our meditations and give us 
fresh incentives to virtue and usefulness. It is a thought 
which may well mingle in the solemnities of this hour. 

Thenation weeps over the tragic end of its chief magis- 
trate, but his kindly words and well-remembered deeds 
are left us as an imperishable legacy. They are enshrined 
in our hearts, and will live in our lives, and will help to 
form the nation's life and character. 

Does not the principle thus stated find illustration in 
our daily life and experience? Do not the sayings and 
doings of your departed friends often arrest you in the 
stir of business or pleasure, imparting a new impulse 
either for good or evil ? Do not their words often echo in 
the chambers of memory, stirring the heart to its deepest 
depths ? Do not their features and forms start into bright 
contrast with the darkness of actual absence, and make 
the present radiant with the light of early recollections ? 
Do not the sounds of the one and the sight of the other 
daguerreotype themselves upon our moral life ? 

Can we isolate and divest ourselves utterly from the 
impressions made upon us by those who have ceased to 
move in the throng of living men % 

We are shaped and moulded in our characters, not less 
by the memories and forces of the past, than by the sur- 
roundings of the present. We are cheeked and sti inula- 



258 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

ted by the example and teaching of those who have rested 
from their labors, and which now come to ns like a pro- 
phet's voice from out the dark and dreamlike past. 

A young man, for instance, who has been trained under 
the best maternal influence, becomes restless and discon- 
tented, and leaves the home of his childhood and the re- 
straints of former years, and yields himself a victim to 
passion and to crime. In the lapse of time, and in the 
far-off land of his prodigality, the ghosts of departed 
scenes of innocence flit before him, and the voice of the 
heart-broken mother rings amid his heart's emptiness, and 
though dead, she yet speaketh with an emphasis and effect 
she could not command when living. 

We may vary the illustration and take that of a de- 
parted minister of Christ. He stood as the ambassador 
of God, and his eye kindled with the fires of inspiration, 
and his face glowed with rapture as he gave utterance to 
the great messages of truth and salvation. He shunned 
not to declare the whole counsel of God : 

" Yet he was humble, kind, forgiving, mild, 
And with, all patience and affection taught, 
Rebuked, persuaded, solaced, counselled, warned, 
In fervent style and manner. Needy poor 
And dying men, like music, heard his feet 
Approach their beds, and guilty wretches took 
New hope, and in his prayers wept and smiled 
And blessed him as they died forgiven ; and all 
Saw in his face contentment, in his life 
The path to glory and perpetual joy." 

But he died ! the voice that brought consolation to the 
mourner's heart has become silent. The tongue which 
poured forth the irresistible stream of sacred eloquence 
has become mute and still. The eye that kindled with 
almost insufferable lustre has become rayless, and the 
lips on which hundreds hung with breathless attention 



BUKCHARD. 259 

have been closed forever. But has all that excellence 
died ? Is all his usefulness at an end ? No, my breth- 
ren, u he being dead yet speaketh." His example lin- 
gers behind him. The good and imperishable of his 
nature walks among his nock, visiting their homes, com- 
forting the sorrowing, warning the wicked, and reasoning 
in the crowded assembly " of righteousness, temperance, 
and judgment to come." And the multitude may not 
perceive till they see the parting wing that an angel has 
been with them. 

Often there comes from the pastor laid in his grave a 
more tender and melting eloquence than there came from 
the same pastor when standing in the holy place and an- 
ointed for his work, and from the herald of Jesus wrap- 
ped in his winding sheet, a more successful sermon than 
from the herald of Jesus robed in the vestments of his 
official character. And aside from this, precious and per- 
petual harvests may be reaped by his successors from the 
seed sown by hands that have done their work. But, my 
brethren, this is the fair side of the picture, and were the 
influence left behind by the dead always of this charac- 
ter, then would men be throughout their entire history 
like angels of mercy scattering a golden radiance from 
their wings, or as glorious meteors rising in rapid succes- 
sion over a world of darkness, anticipating and heralding 
the light of the millennial day. 

But alas ! if many of the dead yet speak for God and 
truth, and freedom, and oppressed humanity, others utter 
a different voice, and leave behind them a curse in- 
stead of a blessing. Reverse the portraits we have just 
sketched. 

Suppose the mother to whom we have alluded, instead 
of training up her children " in the nurture and admoni- 
tion of the Lord," had encouraged them both by precept 



260 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN". 

and example to walk in the ways of fashion, worldliness, 
and sin, to neglect God and the great salvation, what is the 
influence she leaves behind her % The same voice comes 
from her grave as from her home. And often and 
again will her evil maxims be quoted, and her life of 
thoughtless gayety appealed to as a sanction for more ex- 
cessive frivolity and sin. She is dead, but the bane of 
her example lives ; her form is beneath the sod, but her 
voice is still heard, and her spectre still lingers in the cir- 
cle of her children and friends as a mighty incentive to evil. 
We may pass from this to a higher sphere, and take 
the minister whose character is just the reverse of that to 
which we have referred : 

" He swore in sight of God 
And man to preach his master Jesus Christ, 
Yet preached himself ; he swore that love of souls 
Alone had drawn him to the Church, yet strowed 
The path that led to hell with tempting- flowers, 
And in the ear of sinners, as they took 
The way of death, he whispered peace. 
The man, who came with thirsty soul to hear 
Of Jesus, went away unsatisfied ; 
For he another gospel preached than Paul, 
And one that had no Saviour in it, and yet 
His life was worse." 

Now, what will be the posthumous influence of such 
a minister ? Can it be other than evil only, evil con- 
tinually ? 

The field on which he labored will have received a 
blight and a mildew. The gospel has been belied, and 
there will spring up a harvest of infidelity 

Thus far have we spoken of the influence for good or 
evil, which men leave behind them in the immediate 
circle in which they moved while living. But there are 
other ways in which men may speak to the coming gen- 



DURCHAED., 261 

erations, as with a voice echoing through the ages. \Ve 
refer not to the lettered tombstones, which often tell of 
deeds of valor and of a loving trust in God ; nor of monu- 
ments erected to commemorate illustrious worth ; nor of 
splendid legacies to the cause of beneficence, which en- 
shrine the donor in the memory and affection of the 
Church. But the earth is filled with the labors — the 
works of the dead. 

Almost all the literature — the discoveries of science — 
the glories of art — the ever-enduring temples — the dwell- 
ing places of many generations — the comforts and utilities 
of life — the very framework of society — the institutions 
of nations — the principles of government — the fabrics of 
empire — all are the works of our predecessors, and by 
these, though dead, they yet speak. Their memorials are 
all around us — our footsteps are in their paths — their 
presence is in our dwellings — their voices are in our ears; 
they speak to us in the sad reverie of contemplation — in 
the sharp pang of feeling — in the cold shadow of memory 
— in the bright light of hope ; and can it be that we shall 
not be influenced by the language they utter % 

But the dead speak through the press — the books they 
may have written — and thus perpetuate their influence 
through all time. Baxter, Bunyan, Doddridge, Howe, 
and Edwards are at this moment speaking to thousands, 
with all the freshness and force of personal eloquence, 
and more souls have doubtless been converted through 
their instrumentality since they entered upon their rest, 
than when their voices were heard in the assemblies of 
men. The gospel trumpet which they here put to their 
lips has not ceased its reverberating echo. It rolls like 
the voice of a clarion along down through the ages, and it 
shall continue until another trumpet shall be heard sound- 
ing the funeral knell of time. 



262 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

But wicked men, too, speak through the press, and live 
in their writings to poison the fountains of influence, to 
corrupt hearts that might otherwise have been pure, 
and to desolate homes that otherwise might have been 
happy. 

It will be the keenest sting of the worm which never 
dies, and the most agonizing pang of the fire which shall 
never be quenched, that they have written volumes which 
are circulated by every library and sold by every vender, 
in which the foundations of morality are sapped, and 
thousands of souls effectually and forever ruined. 

The press, my brethren, is a mighty illustration of the 
truth of our text. It shows that the dead live and speak 
and exert an influence in moulding the character of the 
generations which succeed them. And if the wise and 
glorified in heaven wish that their pens had been more 
industriously employed, the fallen and lost in hell wish 
that their hands had been palsied ere they touched the 
scroll which was to scatter plague and pestilence through 
ranks of living men. Thus is the sentiment of our text 
illustrated and confirmed, that a man lives and speaks, in 
his words and deeds and influence, after he is dead. 

There is, indeed, a voice in the providence which has 
bereaved us, that touches the great heart of the nation, 
filling it with sorrow as no other conceivable event could 
have done. We can conceive of nothing short of a uni- 
versal earthquake, or the sound of the archangel's trump, 
which would have produced the gloom, the awe, the con- 
sternation which now surround us. Who that contem- 
plated our country a few days previous to this dreadful 
calamity, and heard the shouts of victorious men, and saw 
everywhere the symbols of joy and of triumph, and lis- 
tened to the expressions of hope, could have named any 
event, not miraculous, which, in a moment, as it were in 



BUECIIAUD. 203 

the twinkling of an eye, would have changed the whole 
aspect of things, would banish mirth from all the gay, 
composure from all the serene ; make the merchant lay 
clown his fabrics, the scribe his pen, and the mechanic 
his tools; unrobe the bride of her ornaments and the 
bridegroom of his attire, change the proclamations of chief 
magistrates from days of rejoicing to days of lamentation, 
and command a universal pause to business and pleasure, 
as though we all were anticipating the ushering in of the clay 
of doom ! Such a shock was inconceivable from the most 
natural causes ! But God has done it, and we stand con- 
fronted before a providence so mysterious, a providence 
that bereaves us, without a moment's warning or anticipa- 
tion, of one of the purest, wisest, and safest of men that ever 
presided over the interests and destinies of a great people. 
In a lecture delivered in this place a year ago, I charac- 
terized him as " the type man of the age." Now that 
death has ensphered and immortalized him, and disarmed 
envious and malignant criticism, I may venture to quote 
what I then said, without fear of giving offence to any 
one. 

"Having thus presented Jefferson Davis as the type 
and exponent of Southern civilization, we come now 
briefly to consider our type man, or the exponent of 
Northern civilization. 

"The two forms of civilization are distinctly before 
you, the bases on which they respectively rest, the prin- 
ciples which they embody, and the spirit with which they 
are animated. And of all the men now before the public 
eye, whether in the cabinet or in the field, Abraham 
Lincoln, the censured and the praised, is our ideal, the 
impersonation of republican principles, the thinker, and 
the type man of the age ! I am aware that this avowal 
is in advance of the popular sentiment, but posterity will 



264 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

do him justice and give him his appropriate niche in the 
temple of fame. lie is not perfect ; he needs refinement 
and taste. Just as our civilization is not perfect ; it is in 
its boyhood state ; it needs development, especially in its 
aesthetic forms. It is not graceful ; nor wrought out into 
perfect symmetry and beauty. Neither is Lincoln hand- 
some ; but he is frank, generous, and true. He has 
muscle and sinew. He has wrought in the log cabin ; on 
the flatboats of the Mississippi: he has wrestled with 
poverty and the tall forest trees of the West. He is, in 
the strictest sense, a man of the working classes. He was 
born to the inheritance of hard work as truly as the poor- 
est laborer's son that digs in the field ; and yet, by the 
strength of his intellect and by his untiring devotion to 
truth and right, he has come up, through an ascending 
series, from the walks of the lowly, from the toils of a 
day-laborer, to stand at the head of one of the most pow- 
erful nations on the earth ! Is he not great ? Is he not 
entitled to our confidence and esteem? 

" Our ship of state is now in a storm of fearful magni- 
tude — the elements are in high commotion, and every 
part of her noble structure is strained to the utmost ten- 
sion, but the mind of the thinker is calm, and his strong 
hand is on the helm. The eyes of all nations are turned 
to this plain back-woodsman, with his good sense, his no- 
ble generosity, his determined self-reliance, and his incor- 
ruptible integrity, as he sits amid the war of conflicting 
elements, striving to guide the national ship through a 
tempest, at whose violence and perils the world's wisest 
and oldest statesmen stand aghast ! Leave him at the helm 
and he will bring the vessel, with all her sails set and her 
pennants flying, to the desired haven, though the old 
scow which she has towed and which has retarded her pro- 
gress from the beginning will have been sunk to the bot- 



BrRCiiAEB. 265 

torn, never again to rise to the surface on our American 
waters ! 

" Lincoln is a strong man, but Lis strength is of a pecu- 
liar kind; it is not aggressive so much as passive, and 
among passive things it is like the strength, not so much 
of a stone buttress as of a wire cable. It is strength 
swaying to every influence, yielding on this side and on 
that to popular and present needs, yet tenaciously and 
inflexibly bound to carry its great end. Surrounded at first 
by all sorts of conflicting claims and elements, by traitors, 
by timid loyalists, by radicals, and conservatives, he has 
listened to all, weighed the words of all, watched, waited 
for light ; but still self-reliant and full of hope, he has kept 
steadily to the one great purpose ; and let him alone and 
the issue is certain — the rebellion will be crushed — the 
Union restored — our national honor vindicated, and 
America shall be all that poets have dreamed or sung : 
' The home of the brave and the land of the free ! ' " 

Are not these true words % Some of you then thought 
that they were said for party effect, but they were spoken 
out of the convictions of an honest heart. Has he not 
done what was predicted of him ? And when the storm- 
fiend was on the waters and the tempest rose high, and 
we all trembled with apprehension, did he not abide calm 
in the ship, his hand steady on the helm, and when the 
storm lulled and the sky began to clear and the sun to 
burst forth from the darkened clouds, and we saw the old 
ship gallantly nearing a peaceful harbor, the stars and 
the stripes floating from her topmost mast, and the multi- 
tude on the shore all jubilant with hope — all elated with 
joy — lo ! the pilot falls by a cowardly assassin, cold and 
unconscious on the deck, his hand still at the helm. The 
commander is dead, but the ship is safe ! The flag floats 

at half mast, but the stars and stripes are all there ! Let 

12 



2QQ DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

our mourning then be tempered with gratitude that our 
beloved chief was permitted to live to accomplish his 
work. He could not have died with greater lustre, when 
his laurels were all fresh and green, and now, the auroral 
halo of the martyr will preserve them unfading through 
all ages. And now, my hearers, what is the voice ad- 
dressed to us from the life, teachings, and example of our 
deceased President ? 

First, that "honesty is the best policy;" that to do 
right is the wisest and safest, leaving our reputation and 
all consequences in the hand of God. 

Abraham Lincoln's administration was characterized 
by no crooked or sinister policy. He was called to his 
responsible position at a time the most difficult and dan- 
gerous to the interests and life of the nation, when trea- 
son was rampant in the different sections of the land — 
when rebellion assumed an attitude the most menacing 
and appalling — when the great republic seemed to be 
shaken to its very foundations and the wisest statesmen 
trembled for the result. But the President was calm and 
firm. lie sought to know his duty and then to do it. He 
adopted his policy, and determined to maintain the integ- 
rity of the government and to vindicate her laws. To 
this end he saw that the rebellion must be subdued, and 
when those in arms would not yield to wise and paternal 
counsel he resolved to settle the great questions at issue by 
the stern arbitrament of the sword. He called for large 
forces and the munitions of war. The people nobly and 
promptly responded, for our national honor had been in- 
sulted and our national life was in jeopardy. Thousands 
of our best and bravest from all the loyal North rushed 
to the rescue of our imperiled country. They fought — they 
. fell on many a battle-field. The rebels were desperate, and 
when our noble President discovered that slavery was to 



BUECHAED. ;>j- 

them a source of strength, he resolved to strike the mon- 
ster to the earth. The timid feared ; the semi-loyal press 
howled, and the more rebellions heaped abuse upon the 
President. Nothing was too vile for them to say. His 
policy was all wrong. He was threatened and villified. 
But Abraham Lincoln was firm in the calm consciousness 
of right and duty. 

But where are his accusers now ? The Daily Nevis and 
the World, that never had a kind word to offer — that in- 
dulged in unmeasured vituperation and abuse while he 
was living, are among the first to do him honor now that 
he is dead. Have they been converted? Has death 
changed their views ? No, my brethren ; in their deep 
heart they knew that Abraham Lincoln was honest and 
true to his country's weal. But they were under the ban 
of party, and could not speak peaceably of him. His acts 
survive him ; his deeds live, and by these, though dead, he 
yetspeaketh. Posterity will do justice to his memory, and 
he will be known in history as the great Emancipator — 
the savior of his country. The almost universal feeling 
even now is, that in his death liberty has lost her greatest 
champion, humanity her truest friend, and America Lev 
purest patriot. 

What then is the voice that comes to us from out the 
back-ground of his noble life ? 

Be honest — true to your convictions of right — firm in 
duty, leaving all issues with God. This marked his char- 
acter and will give immortality to his name. 

Another voice, which he being dead, yet speaketh to 
us, is the folly and sin of putting our trust in an arm of 
flesh. He did not. 

If any man ever cherished a firm reliance on Divine 
Providence, it was Abraham Lincoln. Listen to his ad- 
dress to his fellow-citizens, when first leaving his home 



2C>8 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

for the scene of his labors. He says: " A duty devolves 
upon me which is perhaps greater than that which has 
devolved upon any other man since the days of Wash- 
ington. He never would have succeeded except for 
the aid of Divine Providence, upon wdiich he, at all 
times, relied. I feel that I cannot succeed without the 
same -Divine aid, which sustained him, and on the same 
Almighty Being I place my reliance for support ; and I 
hope you, my friends, will all pray that I may recieve 
that Divine assistance, without which I cannot succeed, 
but with which success is certain." 

Through all the progress of this terrible war, his trust 
has been not so much in the strength of his armies, or the 
skill of his chief captains, as in the favoring providence 
of God. His last inaugural is an outflow of a heart trust- 
ing in God, in which he confesses he has been the child of 
his providence, and simply an instrument in his hand. 

But our danger all along has been in trusting to an 
arm of flesh. In the early history of the war one man 
received almost universal homage until hope deferred, the 
national heart fainted. And now, in our more recently 
brilliant successes, we are in danger of overlooking the 
true source of success in the prominence given to the in- 
strumentalities employed. But from the life, as well as 
from the grave of the President, comes this startling ad- 
montion : 

" Lean not on earth ; 'twill pierce the to thee heart ; 
A broken reed at best — but oft a spear, — 
On its sharp point, peace bleeds and hope expires." 

A similar warning comes from the Divine Oracle : 
" Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, 
in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he re- 
turneth to his earth, in that very day his thoughts per- 
ish." — Psalm clxvi. 3, 4. 



BUKCIIAED, 9(]Q 

The thoughts of our late President respecting the wel- 
fare, peace, and prosperity of the county, though they 
lingered with him to the last, have perished. lie had 
done his work of subduing the rebellion. Other hands 
must do the work of punishing the rebels and reconstruct- 
ing the government, and in this, as in the other, we need 
the Divine guidance and blessing. 

Not Seward nor all the wisdom of the national council, 
but God, must help us to the end. And as his hand has 
been so obviously in the great struggle guiding our ar- 
mies, may we not hope that he will be with us presiding 
over our councils in the restoration of peace and union ? 
And in' this work of pacification and reconstruction, in 
my utterance this day I think I have the mind of God. 
If I were the President I would show no mercy to traitors 
and rebels and assassins at the expense of justice. I 
would see to it that the majesty of law was vindicated 
and the government sustained, if it required a whole hec- 
atomb of human victims. Shall we hate and punish theft 
and arson, and murder, and shall we fraternize with trea- 
son and rebellion ? " Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in 
the streets of Askelon, lest the daughters of the Philis- 
tines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised tri- 
umph." 

Again, had I the ears of the heads of this government, 
I would say, in its reconstruction, whatever else you do 
or fail to do, let not one vestige or germ of that ac- 
cursed system, which has been the cause of all our trouble, 
remain. Let it be uptorn, root and branch, and thrown 
into the great dead sea of past time ! Let there be no 
yielding, no concession, no compromise here, unless you 
would have history repeat itself in a second fratricidal, 
and still more desperate and bloody war ! 

The only remaining utterance or voice which conies to 



270 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

ns from the life and the grave ot our lamented President, 
is in reference to the evanescent nature of all earthly 
good. He had reached the acme of human fame ; he was 
the commander in chief of half a million of armed men ; 
he was the ruler of a mighty nation ; he was in the 
meridian of his days ; he was esteemed for his personal 
character and worth ; and yet in a moment how is the 
mighty fallen, and all the glory of his fame is to him as 
though it had never been. 

But few of all the wrestlers reach the goal of their am- 
bition, or realize their hopes. And such as do, have only 
stood for a short time on the giddy height, and then van- 
ished like the passing meteor, or died a sudden and, per- 
haps, a violent death. Csesar met with the assassin's 
dagger in the Roman senate. Charles the First, King of 
England, and Mary, Queen of Scots, were beheaded. 
Henry the Fourth, King of France, died by the knife of 
the assassin. Napoleon the First was banished. Alex- 
ander, after his brilliant career, died in a drunken revel, 
at an early age. And now our beloved President is 
added, as an illustration of the vanishing nature of all 
human greatness. He, too, has died by the hand of vio- 
lence. 

" Death sitteth in the Capitol ! His sahle wing 
Flung its black shadow o'er a country's hope, 
And lo ! a nation hendeth down in tears." 

Never was grief so heartfelt and universal. It is 
said that death loves a shining mark, and often against 
such are his swiftest arrows hurled. All that we love, 
value, venerate, and press to our hearts, must bow 
to the inevitable decree, " Dust thou art, and unto dust 
thou must return." But when the end comes by vio- 
lence, how doubly inconsolable is the grief! But still 



BUECHARD. 271 

this tragedy Las its voice, and will answer its providen- 
tial end. 

" A thrill of horror through the nation sweeps, 
And tears of anguish from, the eyelids fall ; 
All party ties and lines forgotten are, 
And thus in grief, if not in patriotic joy, 
The nation is as one. 
'Twere well to weep such tears, 
They purge the heart, and to the soul give strength 
To do great deeds, when deeds are needed most ; 
Who loves his Coventry, therefore, shame not now 
O'er her great woe, with me to weep. 
For now each sigh is but a hitter oath, 
Each tear a seal, which makes the oath a bond, 
That every loyal heart doth feel and swear 
Upon the altar of his country's cause, 
Which, by the sacrilegious hand of one 
Who would deface the noblest work of God 
Without a sigh, hath been outraged, 
As never did a fiend the laws of God 
Or man outrage before !" 

But the assassin, though he may elude the vigilance of 
the government for a time, cannot escape. The mark of 
Cain is on his brow, the murderer's guilt is on his soul, 
and the Nemesis of vengeance will find him out, and 
bring him to an awful retribution. But though justice 
may thus be satisfied, though the act may have been suf- 
fered in the Divine providence to tone up the public 
mind to a keener sense of retributive justice, still all this 
does not recall the people's favorite — the type-man of his 
time — our generous, noble, and patriotic President. 

" Gone, gone, gone, to his blest and honored grave, 
Gone, gone, alas ! our noble, and true, and brave ; 
When fond hopes clustered around his life, 
When every heart with love was rife, 
Our brave, true chieftain fell. 



272 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

Lincoln, Lincoln, beloved, fare thee well ! 

Our country's flag around him fold, 
What shroud more meet for heart so brave, 

A nation's prayer shall bless his mould, 
A nation's tears bedew his grave. 

And shall we bear one word of scorn ? 
One rebel taunt, one hostile sneer ? 

No ! freemen, no ! his foes we spurn, 
And pledge our fealty round his bier. 

Freemen ! behold your murdered chief, 
His memory to your care we trust ; 

Let mercy mingle with your grief, 
But strike the traitors to the dust. 

Sleep on, brave chief, the flag you bore 
O'er North and South, shall surely wave, 

And Union, peace, and love once more 
Shall meet and mourn around your grave." 



SERMON XV. 



KEY. J. E. ROCKWELL, D. D. 



" All ye that are about him bemoan him ; and all ye that know his name 
say, how is the strong staff broken and the beautiful rod. "«- Jeremiah 
xlviii. 17. 

" The Lord's voice crieth unto the city, and the man of wisdom shall see 
thy name ; hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it." — Micah vi. 9. 

The solemn providence which has called our nation to 
mourning in the very midst of its joy and exultation over 
the hopes of returning peace, finds a most appropriate ex- 
pression in these words of inspired wisdom. For the 
third time since our existence as an independent govern- 
ment, we have been called upon to mourn over the death 
of our Chief Magistrate. Yet never before has the na- 
tion passed through such an experience as this. At the 
close of four long and weary years of bloody war against 
the foulest and most causeless rebellion that had ever 
stained the annals of the world, our nation was exultant 
over the tidings of victories which it was evident to all 
were soon to end the struggle. Our President, but lately 
taking the oath of office for a second term of service, had 
returned home from a visit to the city which had been the 
seat and centre of rebellion, and from which the grand and 

only important army in the interest of traitors had been 
i£* 273 



274 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

driven, only to be followed by the stern hosts of freedom 
until it had broken up forever, while the leaders of the 
conspiracy were fugitives from the arm of avenging jus- 
tice, seeking safety in an ignominious flight. The rancor 
of party feeling was fast dying out in the nation ; men 
were fast honorably submitting to the voice of the peo- 
ple expressed through the ballot box ; and they were 
gradually yielding to the conviction that Abraham Lincoln 
was an honest and a good man, and, under the guidance 
of heaven, was pursuing a wise and judicious policy, 
which would result in the restoration of peace upon the 
great and immutable principles of truth, liberty, and 
righteousness. On him the eyes of the whole people were 
turning as the man by whose- wisdom, prudence, and con- 
ciliatory course treason was to be crushed out and the re- 
bellious States brought back upon the great platform of 
the Constitution, with only the one condition of a destruc- 
tion of the great system of slavery, which had been the 
weapon used by their leaders against the life of the na- 
tion. It was evident to all that this institution had re- 
ceived its death-blow at the hands of its friends. Aready 
Missouri, Maryland, and Tennessee had accepted these 
terms and broken the last shackle that had held their fel- 
low-men in bondage ; and even in South Carolina — the 
very hot-bed of treason — such a man as Governor Aiken 
led the way in emancipation by striking off the chains of 
his one thousand slaves, and giving them farms to culti- 
vate with free labor. A few more blows only were to be 
struck and the whole system would fall, and the South, 
restored to the Union and to the affections of their breth- 
ren, would resume its place, out of which it had only 
been jostled for a time by ambitious and unprincipled 
leaders, who had held over the seceded States a reign of 
terror. For the solution of all the intricate and delicate 



ROCKWELL. 275 

questions which would arise in the final restoration of the 
Union ; for the proper punishment of the men who had 
instigated the rebellion; for a wise and just discrimina- 
tion between the leaders and the misguided victims; for 
a course of kind conciliation towards the men who had 
been forced into the war against their better judgment 
and wishes, and for a discovery and due reward of those 
who had all the while been loyal to the Union — the na- 
tion were looking to Abraham Lincoln with' increasing 
confidence and hope. No man had ever gained more rap- 
idly in the respect and affections of his political enemies ; 
never was man more warmly loved by his friends since 
the days of Washington. He seemed to have been raised 
up by a kind Providence to meet the most solemn and 
momentous crisis in the history of this nation, and to deal 
with the most gigantic rebellion that had ever been wit- 
nessed in the world's history. Again and again was the 
anxious whisper heard, as it was known that he had gone 
to the front of the army, and then to Richmond : Is it safe 
for the President to put his life in jeopardy, on which so 
many interests are suspended ? And the whole nation 
breathed more freely when his safe return to Washington 
was announced. It has been said a man's life is immortal 
till his work is done. And so has it proved. Our hon- 
ored and beloved President, who had safely reached the 
capital when traitorous fiends were determined to prevent 
his first inauguration; who had for four years been un- 
harmed, even while bitter and open enemies were plot- 
ting against him under the very shadow of the vast dome 
beneath which our national Congress gathers ; who had 
safely passed through Richmond, around which were still 
lingering traitorous bands who had for four years nursed 
against him their most bitter hatred — returned to his 
home only to die. In the midst of a scene of pleas urc,. 



276 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

whither lie had gone that he might not disappoint the 
crowds that had assembled to see him and the gallant and 
glorious general under whose giant blows rebellion had 
staggered and fallen — surrounded by his family and 
friends — he was struck down by the hand of an assassin, 
who, for many weeks, had been watching his opportunity, 
and whose act turned that scene of festivity to a house of 
death and woe, sending a thrill of horror and agony over 
the whole nation. Who can describe the gloom that set- 
tled over our land like a pall of death when the dreadful 
deed was announced, and the tidings spread from city to 
city, from ocean to ocean, with the speed of the light- 
ning : The President has been assassinated ! The Pres- 
ident is dying ! The President is dead ! 

How appropriate might the murderer have repeated, 
as he was preparing for his fearful deed of blood, the 
words — which must have been familiar to his mind — 
placed in the lips of Macbeth when contemplating the 
assassination of his king: 

" He hath home his facilities so meek, hath heen 
So clear in his great office, that his virtues 
Will plead like angels, trnmpet-tongued, against 
The deep damnation of his taking oft. 
And Pity, like a naked new-horn "babe, 
Striding the "blast, or heaven's cherubim horsed 
Upon the sightless courier of the air, 
Shall hlow the horrid deed in every eye, 
That tears shall drown the wind." 

Yet no such reflections entered his mind or heart to bid 
him pause in his horrid work. Abandoned of heaven, 
nerving his arm by the intoxicating draught, fully bent 
upon his fiendish purpose, resolved to accomplish what 
had evidently been in his heart, and in the hearts of his 
accomplices and abettors — he deliberately entered the 
scene of mirth and festivity, where sat his victim, and 



ROCKWELL. 277 

with unerring aim struck at the life of the man who was 

pursuing but one noble impulse — the salvation of the 
Union — and whose kind and loving heart was waiting to 
extend mercy to even his enemies and the enemies of his 
country. How is the strong staff broken and the beauti- 
ful rod ! Yet as we stand mute and sorrow-stricken in 
the midst of our national calamity, let us hearken to 
God's voice saying to us, "Hear ye the rod, and him that 
hath appointed it," How often has death stricken down 
men to whom the people were looking, and on whose wis- 
dom and firmness they depended in the midst of great 
national crises. 

1. Is not, therefore, the first lesson which we are taught, 
the folly of putting our trust in man I There is a con- 
stant proneness to look to means for our security and pros- 
perity, rather than to the Divine energy and power that 
alone make those means successful, or that can or will ac- 
complish its purpose by other instrumentalities and in 
other ways. In times of commercial embarrassment the 
nation turns to some favorite statesman, by whose politi- 
cal sagacity impending evils may be averted. When the 
dark cloud of war hangs gloomy and portentous over the 
land, how few turn to Him who hath said, "The battle is 
not with the strong," who alone gives success to our arms, 
while the land rings with the praises of him who is ap- 
pointed to lead our armies, and whose skill and bravery 
is their only earnest of success. What crowds attend the 
career of a nation's idol ; how few think of giving the first 
and highest praise to Gocl ! And may we not now hear 
in this new and terrible calamity the solemn and instruc- 
tive warning : " Cease ye from man, whose breath is in 
his nostrils ?" What though lie treasured up all the 
stores of human wisdom ; what though he possess the re- 
spect and confidence of every section, and be able to pro- 



278 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

pose terms of peace that shall forever heal the wounds 
through which the nation's life-blood is flowing, and make 
honorable and abiding reconciliation between a distracted 
people ; what though at his call vast armies start up in 
the defence of the republic, and mighty navies sweep the 
sea to guard our nation's honor and protect its commerce ; 
— in a moment, when all his well-matured plans are ripe 
for execution, when the strife of party is hushed, and the 
whole nation acknowledges his wisdom and goodness, 
death steps in to close up his career, and he passes away 
forever from among the living. Oh, what folly, then, for a 
nation to trust in an arm of flesh ! Gather around that 
coffin, ye who look to man and not to God for help and 
safety ; look upon those pale features ; touch that cold 
forehead and those motionless hands, and hear ye the rod 
and who hath appointed it. Oh ! that we might learn, in 
the solemn lesson of God's providence that God alone is 
our trust. Oh! that now, ere we begin to inquire into 
the qualifications of him who now has assumed the gov- 
ernment of the nation, we might pause and remember 
that God alone is great, and that he alone is worthy of 
our trust and confidence. 

2. Again : In this solemn dispensation of Divine Prov- 
idence we are taught to recognize God's power and sov- 
ereignty. One of the great sins of our nation has been a 
virtual denial of the Divine authority. Infidelity makes 
open and unblushing assaults upon all that is sacred in 
his word and character. The institutions of religion 
have become subjects of conventional debates and angry 
discussion. The press teems with the most direct assaults 
upon the laws and authority of God, as made known in 
his word, and the minds of multitudes are tainted with 
the dreadful poison. Look at many who are high in office 
and political influence, and how little evidence they give 



ROCKWELL. 279 

of any respect for the word of God as laying any claim 
to public and national obedience. Look at our broken 
and dishonored Sabbaths. How many turn their feet 
away from the sanctuary ; how crowded are all our great 
avenues w r ith old and young, intent only on pleasure, even 
amid the very sound of the Sabbath bells. And what 
evidence do w T e here find of a growing disregard for Di- 
vine law and authority. Such evidence is found, too, in 
the increasing sin of profanity, in the prevalence of in- 
temperance, and the open and gross violation of all 
healthful laws for its suppression. Such is the horrible 
increase of infidel and licentious literature, showing a 
most depraved state of public morals that could either 
demand or sanction such infamous and demoralizing: 
sources of vice and profligacy. Such is the open and 
growing disregard for sound and wholesome laws, and a 
w^ant of submission to constituted authority, culminating 
at last in treason and rebellion, and aided and encouraged 
by men who have thus sought to gratify their party pre- 
judices or personal ambition. These and a thousand sim- 
ilar evils have been terrible indications that our nation 
has been drifting away from its allegiance to God and 
casting aside his authority and law. Thanks be to his 
name, the evil has been checked in a measure, and among 
our leaders and rulers there has been evidence of a desire 
to acknowledge his sovereignty and look to him for help. 
Yet by what a terrible process have we been brought to 
a sense of duty and of obligation to him ! And oh ! that 
now, standing in the very presence of death, we might 
feel that God is our sovereign, and that, as a nation, we 
owe him supreme allegiance ! 

3. And in immediate connection with this thought, is not 
God, in this solemn and terrible providence, recalling tc 
our minds and consciences the sanctions and guards and 



280 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

penalties by which, he has ever designed his law should 
be honored and human life preserved. Amid the earliest 
statutes ever given to man was that which guarded human 
life from violence, by requiring the life of the murderer. 
To Noah it was said : — " Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by 
man shall his blood be shed." And that law was again 
and again repeated in such language as this : — " He that 
smiteth a man so that he die shall surely he put to death." 
"Moreover, ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of a 
murderer which is guilty of death ; for blood defiletli the 
land, and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is 
shed therein but by the blood of him that shed it." No 
one can read the word of God and not see how carefully 
he has thrown around human life the sanctions and penal- 
ties of his law. Nor can we fail to see how fearful w T ould 
be the consequences were society to be exposed to brutality 
and crime, unchecked by these -dreadful consequences of 
transgression. Yet who has not observed the growing 
disposition on the part of many modern radical reformers 
to do away with capital punishment, and to treat murder- 
ers as ordinary criminals are treated? Who has not no- 
ticed that, while our papers contain almost daily notices 
of acts of violence and assassination, but few of the crimi- 
nals are ever brought to justice and punished with death ? 
And this spirit of leniency towards convicted murderers 
was showing itself even in relation to the men who have 
plotted and executed the foul act of treason that has re- 
sulted in untold suffering and misery, and the death of 
thousands and hundreds of thousands of our noblest and 
bravest- men. I confess that I have read with shame and 
indignation the speeches and editorials of men who, hav- 
ing done all in their power to awaken angry and excited 
passions in past years between the two sections of our 
country now at war, who have sneered at and denounced 



ROCKWELL. 281 

conservative men for their efforts to retain peaceable rela- 
tions between the North and the South by upholding the 
provisions of the Constitution, now ask that the arch trai- 
tors and plotters of rebellion, who have for forty years been 
laying their plans for secession, and have used slavery and 
abolition simply as the best means for accomplishing their 
foul and infernal purposes, should be kindly treated ; and 
that — in the language of one of these orators — we should 
say to them as we would to a wasp whom we first had 
thought to crush, "There is room enough in the world for 
thee and me." We punish with death the man who takes 
a single life. Shall we do less to him on whose soul is the 
blood of thousands who have perished on the battle-field, 
and of thousands more cruelly and brutally starved to 
death in their dark and horrible prisons, while those of 
their number who have fallen into our hands have been 
fed and clothed, and cared for in the very spirit and letter 
of the command, "If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if 
he thirst, give him drink." No, no. God's law lays upon 
us its demands that these murderers should die, not to 
gratify a thirst for revenge, but that all coming ages may 
read a lesson of justice and righteousness in the punish- 
ment of treason and rebellion, and learn to keep the law, 
which declares, " Thou shalt do no murder." And may 
it not be that God has permitted this great crime, which 
has struck at the head and the heart of the nation, to 
awaken us to a sense of justice and to a full exaction of 
the penalty of God's law upon those who have planned 
and accomplished the horrible scenes of the past four 
years ? God punished treason and rebellion when it broke 
out in heaven by the immediate and condign punishment 
of the angels that kept not his law. We cannot be wiser 
and kinder than God. We cannot find fault with his 
administration, or question the justice of that law that 



282 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

dooms the murderer to punishment. I yield to no 
man in my love of mercy and clemency to the erring. 
I yield to no man in the respect and affection I have had 
for many noble-hearted and honorable men whom I have 
known in other clays at the South, and who have been 
forced into an apparent if not real acquiescence of the 
doctrine of secession. I will be among the first to extend 
to such my hand when they shall again stand with me 
under the same broad folds of our national banner, and 
pledge themselves to be henceforth true to the Union. I 
will be among the first to give, to the utmost of my abil- 
ity, aid and support to the thousands of misguided men 
who have staked and lost their all in this dreadful rebel- 
lion. But every sense of justice, every prompting of love 
for truth and law and peace and human safety and national 
life and honor, demand for the men who have instigated 
and fomented this foul, unnatural, and monstrous rebellion, 
that God's law be fully vindicated. " Whoso sheddeth 
man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." " He that 
taketh life by the sword shall perish by the sword. Their 
chief associates must be sent forth and banished with the 
mark of Cain upon their foreheads." Anything less than 
this will only be a premium offered to treason and law- 
lessness and murder — will only throw into our future politi- 
cal contests elements of strife and discord, and national 
dishonor and ruin. 

4. Again : This dispensation of God's providence re- 
minds the Church of the duties she owes to the nation 
and her rulers. I exhort, saith the apostle, that, first of 
all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of 
thanks be made for all men, for kings and all in authority. 
God has placed his Church in this nation not to seek un- 
holy alliance with the State, but to throw into it ele- 
ments of virtue and piety and justice and truth. Ten 



E K'KWKLL. 283 

righteous men would have saved the cities of the Plain. 
The Church alone, under God, can save this nation. She 
can throw over it the shield of her faith and love and 
prayer. She can by her efforts arrest the torrent of infi- 
delity and lawlessness and crime, and secure such a state 
of public morals as shall constitute that righteousness 
that exalteth a nation. And is not the present the time 
for special prayer and earnest effort in this behalf ? — now 
that the spirit of party is hushed ; now that men of the 
most opposite political principles are nobly laying aside 
all previous prejudices, and uniting to support the gov- 
ernment and uphold the Union ; now that all classes are 
standing hushed and subdued and thoughtful around the 
remains of departed worth and greatness ; now when our 
rulers are made to feel that they are mortal, and to know 
that they must give an account of their stewardship ? Is 
not this the hour when we may hope and ought earnestly 
to pray that around the grave of our late honored Execu- 
tive every selfish and unholy feeling may be buried, and 
the hearts of men become the seat of a generous love of 
country, and the passions be brought under a sense of re- 
sponsibility to God ? Oh, what a patriot was Moses when 
he stood between an incensed and avenging God and a 
guilty nation and plead that he would spare his people ! 
And may not Christians in this country be equally in 
earnest in their prayers for their rulers and for the 
nation ? Here is the last grand experiment of freedom. 
If we fail, the hope of oppressed millions expires in the 
darkness. "Where else shall Liberty find her home ? 
Where else shall be fostered those influences that are now 
felt in every nation, and are inspiring millions with con- 
fidence of eventually rejoicing in the removal of every 
yoke of spiritual or political bondage. He who has been 
so suddenly taken from us has left us a rich legacy in his 



284 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

noble and unfaltering purpose to preserve the Union. 
Let us gather around his grave as the children of one 
great family, and catching his spirit — or rather brea'hing 
it in with our common Christianity — offer up our prayers 
to Him who heareth prayer, for our rulers and the per- 
petuity and prosperity of our nation. 

5. Again : We behold in the death of our President a 
lesson of the vanity of earthly honor and power. What 
does our whole nation present but an incessant struggle 
for wealth and office ? How many neglect in this pursuit 
the deathless soul and all its interests ! How many would 
willingly barter away every manly and noble principle to 
attain the exalted position — or even one far inferior to it 
— which Abraham Lincoln but lately occupied! Yet 
what does all avail him now ? Never, perhaps, since the 
days of Washington was a man more reluctantly and un- 
ambitiously drawn to the possession of such distinguished 
honors. Seldom has a path to glory been so modestly 
and unobtrusively pursued. Seldom has one risen from 
an humble position to a higher eminence. He became 
what he was not by inheritance from a long line of kingly 
ancestors. He sat not upon a throne reared up by blood 
and oppression ; but, making his way from an humble 
and obscure cottage in the Western wilderness — self-sup- 
ported and self-educated — he passed on by untiring in- 
dustry, and sustained by a cheerful and hopeful heart, 
through the profession of his choice, until the voice of a 
great people called him to occupy a position which 
monarchs might envy. And then, too, by his purity and 
honesty of purpose, by his noble and generous qualities 
of mind and heart, he drew towards him even the respect 
and reverence of his political opponents ; and men who 
once denounced him have approved and sustained his ad • 
ministration. Yet what does all this avail him now \ 



ROCKWELL. 285 

What to him is the splendor of his palace, the wealth and 
the honors of earth ? Oh, how infinitely are they all sur- 
passed by one word from that Saviour whom we believe 
he loved ! " Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." Life's 
fitful fever is over, and he sleeps as lowly as the poor sol- 
.dier that sunk to his grave amid the tumult of battle. 
Go to that sepulchre, and read there the vanity of earthly 
possessions and honors. The illustrious dead sleeps on 
undisturbed, while they who sought his favor drop a tear 
to his memory and then turn to gaze upon the new star 
now in the ascendant, and who must in his time pass 
away to be numbered with the dead. 

" Why all this toil for triumph of an hour ; 
What though we wade in wealth or soar in fame ; 
Earth's highest station ends in ' Here he lies,' 
And ' Dust to dust' concludes our nohlest song." 

Such is the vanity of life; and oh, that this whole na- 
tion might hear the voice of God calling us away to the 
pursuit of what is alone fully worthy the soul — the ser- 
vice of God, and preparation to meet him in judgment. 
How solemn and awful is the monition that comes to its 
from the hushed repose of the grave which has now 
closed upon the mighty dead. His high official position, 
his brilliant career, his exalted character, could not avert 
the winged messenger as it came from the hand of an as- 
sassin, yet directed by a sovereign God. No more shall 
he hear the shouts df the victors, or the plaudits of a 
grateful and exultant people. No more shall his wisdom 
direct the councils of the Cabinet, and his mind project 
schemes for the union and perpetuity of the nation. His 
eye is closed that shone with unaffected gentleness and 
wept in pity over the dying, or brightened witli thoughts 
of his country's greatness and glory. In the midst of all 



2 5 G DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

his pleasures and his honor, he has sunk to his grave. 
Alas ! even in the garden there is a sepulchre. We walk 
beneath its shades, we gaze upon its beauties, and, while 
plucking its flowers, we feel the damp mould of the 
grave. Behold the house appointed for all the living, and 
read the unvarying lessons of nature : " All flesh is grass, 
and all the goodliness thereof as the flowers of the grass." 
Oh ye who are toiling lor earthly wealth or fame, enter 
that princely mansion where beauty and honor and power 
have often met, and see in his narrow cofiin the man at 
whose command thousands rushed together to stand up 
in defence of the republic ; at whose word the shackles 
of millions were broken ; around whom were gathered 
the wisdom and strength of the nation ! Yet all now is 
hushed and still. His work is done. Tread lightly around 
the honored dead, and listen to the voice that speaks 
from the repose of death, and that bids you seek those 
joys which are unfading and eternal. Oh turn your eyes 
to the grave whither you are hastening, that home of 
man — 

" Where dwells the multitude. We gaze around, 
We read their monuments ; we sigh, and while 
We sigh, we sink and are what we deplored — 
Lamenting or lamented, all our lot." 

6. Lastly, this solemn providence reminds us all of 
the necessity of immediate prepartion for death. Oh how 
terrible is the lesson which we are here reading of the 
uncertainty of life. How solemn is the monition which 
conies to each of us. "What thine hand findeth to do, do it 
with thy might. Be ye also ready, for in such an hour as 
ye think not the Son of Man cometh. How rapid was the 
transition of our beloved President from time to eternity ! 
Think of it, my hearers, and be warned in time to secure 
an interest in the great salvation. We believe that he 



ROCKWELL. 2 8 7 

over whom a nation now mourns had, in life and health, 
accepted of Christ as his Saviour; that he had calmly- 
looked at the great subject of his soul's salvation, and, 
convinced of his need of mercy through a Divine Re- 
deemer, had, with the simplicity of a child, trusted his 
eternal interests into the hands of him who was mighty 
to save, and whose blood cleanseth from all sin. Oh, 
then, let his death — so sudden, so dreadful as to its circum- 
stances — remind you of the need of immediate prepara- 
tion for that eternity to which we are all hastening. 
Christ, and Christ alone, is the hope of the soul. In him 
we are safe. He who relies upon his death and merits 
is alone fitted to die. When death comes to him it finds 
him ready. He can hear unmoved, and fearless, the sum- 
mons which calls him away to grapple with the last ene- 
my. He alone can see in death a friend that beckons 
him to come up higher, and can look upon the scenes of 
earth, as they fade away from his vision, without regret, 
and go to his dying bed, 

" Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
Ahout him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." 

Oh, my hearers ! — ye men of business and care ! ye chil- 
dren and youth ! — will you not to-day listen to the provi- 
dence of God which calls upon you to seek first the king- 
dom of God and his righteousness ? Christ alone can fit 
you to live. He alone can prepare you to die ; and in 
that solemn hour, when heart and flesh fail, he will be 
the strength of 3 r our heart and your portion forever. 



SERMON XVI. 



KEY. SAMUEL T. SPEAR, D. D. 



I meet you to-day, my friends and fellow-countrymen, 
under circumstances of the greatest public grief and 
sorrow. I had risen early Saturday morning to com- 
plete the first of two sermons, having for my theme 
" Victory and its Duties," and expecting to have preached 
that sermon to you at this time. I waited for the morn- 
ing paper, and when it came it brought to me, as it did 
to you, the intelligence of the most awful event in the 
history of this country. The carrier greeted me with a 
tearful and saddened countenance, exclaiming : u Sad 
news this morning! The President is shot!" I could 
scarcely believe it true ; yet I opened the paper and read 
the dispatches, and saw that it was so. Ere this the news 
has spread through all parts of the land, kindling emotions 
in in the hearts of the nation which no words can describe. 
But yesterday we were joyous and hopeful, thanking God 
for his mercies, and congratulating each other upon 
the bright prospects of the future. Our recent vic- 
tories gave promise of a speedy and lasting peace. We 
saw, as we supposed, the end of this terrible war. How 
suddenly and how awfully have our emotions been 
changed into those of the deepest sorrow ! Who can refuse 
13 289 



290 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

to weep ? Who can withhold his tears or command his 
feelings at such a moment ? And is it so ? Has the Presi- 
dent of these United States ; the personal representative 
of the honor, glory, and dignity of this nation ; the man 
of the people's choice ; the man who has guided the ship of 
state with consummate wisdom and unfaltering integrity 
during these stormy years ; the man whom God seems to 
have raised np and signally qualified for the duties of this 
great crisis — yes, has Abraham Lincoln, good in his great- 
ness and great in his goodness, fallen the victim of mur- 
derous assassination, just in the moment of our triumph? 
And has his honorable Secretary of State been assailed 
with the instrument of death for a like purpose ? We 
pause in the profoundest astonishment. Our indignation 
in one direction, and our sorrow in the other, are past all 
utterance. The American people never felt this as they 
do to-day. They never before had such an occasion for 
feeling. We all feel the dreadful blow. It has fallen 
upon us like a thunderbolt in the midst of our joys. To 
the deep and pungent thrill of the national heart no hu- 
man words can do any adequate justice. 

1. Looking towards earth, and at man, one instinctively 
inquires, Avhy has the assassinating hand sought the life 
of Abraham Lincoln and that of William H. Seward ? 
Why has the President of these United States been 
marked for death ? The answer is a plain one. It con- 
sists in the fact that he was the President, officially en- 
trusted with the executive duty of administering the 
military power of this government for the suppression of 
a wanton and wicked rebellion against the constituted 
authorities of the land. This was Mr. Lincoln's sole of- 
fence. The murderous weapon was not aimed at him as 
a man, but as the President of these United States — as 
God's minister for the punishment of evil doers and the 



SPEAR. 



291 



praise of them that do well. It was therefore aimed at 
you and at me — at every man, woman and child living 
under the protection of this government; at public order, 
at the sanctity of law, at the integrity of the Union, and 
at the God who commands our subjection to the powers 
that be. This is the true interpretation of the blow 
sought to be struck ; and this it is that gives significance 
to the act. We look upon Mr. Lincoln as a murdered 
President, and not as a man falling in the private walks 
of life, the victim of a purely personal vengeance. The 
blood that flowed from his lacerated brain was in the cir- 
cumstances official blood. The pistol-shot that hurried 
him to his doom was fired into the heart of the nation. 1 
do not wish to stir either your passions or my own to un- 
due violence ; yet I think it best in this dreadful hour to 
look at facts as they are and speak of things as they are. 
Abraham Lincoln will go down to posterity as a murdered 
and a martyred President — slain for discharging his duty, 
honored by God, and trusted by a grateful people. In 
his death we all feel the pangs of death. Well may the 
nation bow in grief. Well may all party feeling and ran- 
cor subside, while a whole people weep before God under 
an oppressive sense of the calamity which has befallen 
them. 

2. Looking at the circumstances attending this snd 
event, we inquire : Whence came the blow ? It was on 
the evening of the clay when the flag of the Union again 
floated in triumph over the war-scarred walls of Fort 
Sumter. It was when the nation had flung her proud 
flag to the breeze in the fulness of grateful joy; when 
victories had seemingly extinguished the last hope of the 
rebel insurgents ; when Jefferson Davis, the traitor and 
the tyrant, was fleeing from the hand of avenging justice. 
It was at a time and in a place when and where our great 



2;»*J DEATH OF PKESIDENT LINCOLN. 

military commander was expected to be present, who was 
doubtless marked for the same fate. The thing was done 
under circumstances that clearly imply plan and concert 
of action, and more parties than one as involved in this 
stupendous guilt. Why was Mr. Seward assaulted at the 
same time and in a different place ? And who held the 
horses of these fiends in human shape, while each pro- 
ceeded to the work of death ? I know not, my friends, 
who these men are ; but I cannot well resist the conclu- 
sion that they represent a class — and, I must add, a very 
large class — of those with whom we have been contend- 
ing in this war, who will rejoice when they hear the 
news, and laud these murderous wretches as distinguished 
heroes. I do not say that a large number of persons 
were directly privy to this assassinating conspiracy ; yet, 
you may depend upon it, the agents thereof had their ac- 
complices. This, let me tell you, is the work of traitors, 
coming from the same impulses and inspired by the same 
hellish motives which have governed traitors in seeking 
the destruction of this government. It is one of the 
dread incidents of their treason, accomplished in the mo- 
ment of their extremest desperation. It is the work of 
men the same in kind as those who sought to wrap the 
city of New York in one universal conflagration ; the 
same in kind as those who refused all quarter to our col- 
ored soldiers at Fort Pillow ; the same in kind as those 
who sacked the city of Lawrence, in Kansas, and mur- 
dered its helpless citizens. It is a work proceeding from 
the same spirit, the same style and temper of humanity, 
that has, by the precess of slow starvation, deliberately 
murdered our prisoners of war by thousands and tens of 
thousands. 

Jefferson Davis, the head of the rebel Confederacy, has 
not personally assassinated the President, I am aware — per- 



spear. 293 

haps lie had no direct connection with this atrocious mur- 
der — yet, by his authority, by his agents, with his know- 
ledge and approbation, thousands of our soldiers have been 
literally starved to death in rebel prisons. General Lee 
may be a Christian gentleman — some people say he is — 
yet he is a traitor to his country, who richly deserves to be 
hung for his crimes. Libby Prison and Belle Isle were 
directly under his eye at Richmond ; he knew how our 
prisoners were treated in those dens of death as well as 
elsewhere ; he was, too, the man of great influence in the 
Confederate government ; and when and where did Gen- 
eral Lee ever lift his voice, or do a solitary tiling to miti- 
gate these outrageous enormities ? I am speaking in a 
plain way. My soul is stirred within me. These are se- 
rious times. Let me tell you, my friends and fellow 
countrymen, that this act of assassination does not stand 
alone by itself. It is one of a series. It has a common 
basis with other acts of kindred character. It represents 
and identifies itself with a class of acts, as it will crown 
them with an immortality of infamy. It is the creature 
of treason ; and this treason is the child of slavery ; and 
this slavery has made the traitors barbarians, who would 
rather rule in hell than submit in heaven. The history of 
this war proves it. We may as well understand first as 
last with what kind of men we are and have been dealing 
in this dreadful contest of arms. They are desperate men. 
slavery has made them insensible to the rights of our 
common humanity, ruined their moral sense, and just 
fitted them for the work of treason and death. Our ex- 
cellent President, for whom we have so often thanked the 
God of heaven, who in his life so beautifully recognized 
the providence and the grace of the King of kings, from 
whose past wisdom we have received so many blessings, 
and in whose future we had hoped so largely, now lies in 



294 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

death — stricken down by a traitor's hand. I have been 
compelled to ask, in view of the circumstances, whence 
came the blow? ~Not simply from the daring fiend who 
inflicted it, but from a source more generic and universal. 
Treason fired that shot, and treason killed the President, 
and slavery made the man and the men fit for such deeds. 
And treason wants nothing but power to kill this nation. 
It has never yielded to anything but power, and it never 
will. The men in whom is embodied this spirit of treason, 
who are its leaders and great sources, must be absolutely 
crushed and utterly blasted in this country. You can 
never have any peace with them. You can never make 
any peace with them. They are not the men of peace. 
The military arm of the government must first subjugate 
them; and then a just and righteous retribution must so 
dispose of them that they will be virtually dead to the 
country. Then you will have peace; and till then you 
will not. 

3. Looking again at this sorrowful event, I am led 
to submit another question : Who are the mourners, 
the men and women that will be afflicted by this appal- 
ling tragedy ? The family of our dead President, his 
wife and children and immediate kindred, are at this mo- 
ment bathed in the most heart-rending sorrow. He who 
was the pride and glory of their lives, whose relation to 
them had lifted them to position and honor, in whose pri- 
vate and public character they could not but rejoice, has 
fallen in a way to give death its deepest affliction and 
grief its most poignant sting. Alas ! for them the hus- 
band, the father, and the guide, is no more. May the 
God of crace comfort them with tliat comfort which God 
only can supply. The members of his cabinet, who have 
so often shared with the President in the councils of 
state ; the generals and other officers of his appointment, 



speak. 295 

who have so nobly borne the banner of their country on 
many a hard-fought field ; the common soldiers who, un- 
der this waving banner, have braved the storm of death 
and driven the rebel hosts in confusion before them; — 
these men of wisdom and these men of valor are to-day 
in tears. Their sensibilities are overwhelmed. They mourn 
the loss of one whom they had learned to trust, and who 
had learned to trust them. All truly loyal men and wo- 
men throughout the nation are mourners to-day. Every 
right-thinking man feels as if he had lost a dear friend. 
During his administration Mr. Lincoln has displayed qual- 
ities of intellect and heart which have commended him 
to the strongest confidence and affection of the American 
people. His sterling honesty, his sagacious and far-reach- 
ing common sense, his abiding faith, his hopeful temper, 
his enduring patience, his fidelity to the country's cause, 
his aimable, forgiving, and unre vengeful mood of feeling, 
his profound respect for the rights of man, and his deep 
reverence for God, mark him as the man whom the peo- 
ple loved. Millions who never saw him felt towards 
Mr. Lincoln the tender attachments of personal friendship. 
There was a charm about his character and his life which 
it is not in human nature to defy or resist. Go where 
you will to-day throughout the length and breadth of this 
land — in the cottages of the poor, or the palaces of the 
rich — and you will see a people bowed in sorrow. A na- 
tion weeps to-day. A nation's President has been assas- 
sinated in the capital of the country; a nation's President 
has fallen in the midst of his usefulness, when his experi- 
ence was so much needed to complete what he had so well 
begun ; and now a nation mourns, as perhaps no other 
people ever did mourn. When I think of the foul and 
villainous murderer, and of the generic inspiration which 
he represents — by which he was moved — my rage, I con- 



296 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

fess, knows no bounds ; and when I think of the sequel 
of that deadly shot, my heart sinks within me. As I feel, 
so you feel ; and so feels every man that deserves the 
name of an American citizen. Honored and sacred dead ! 
this tribute we bring to thy memory. Thy name shall be 
dear to us. Thou art embalmed in a nation's grief. There 
is another class of our fellow-men that may well mourn 
to-day, bringing their tribute of gratitude and love, and 
placing it upon the altar of a great and good man. I allude 
to the suffering sons of human bondage. These sable vic- 
tims of outrage and wrong have heard of Mr. Lincoln. 
They have heard of his emancipation proclamation. They 
have learned to identify their hopes of liberty with his 
name ; and when they shall hear of his death, in the sim- 
plicity and honesty of their hearts they will feel that a 
friend has departed. Mr. Lincoln, though not a fanatic, 
was by nature and conviction, by those generous moral 
sentiments with which kind heaven had inspired his bo- 
som, the friend of the oppressed. He saw and deplored 
the great evils of slavery, and gave his public influence 
on the side of freedom. When he issued his emancipa- 
tion proclamation as a measure of war, he appealed to 
the God of nations and the moral sense of the civilized 
world for the justice of the act. To that proclamation 
he declared his purpose to adhere; and to it he has ad- 
hered with unflinching fidelity. That proclamation will 
make Mr. Lincoln's name dear in all ages. It will be 
read and quoted as a state paper of the highest rank and 
the largest philanthopy. Well may the outcast sons of 
bondage bless God for the life of such a man, and well 
may they mourn over his death. They have tears to shed 
to-day — tears, too, that do honor to the man for whom 
they weep. One of their most eminent and valuable 
friends now lies in death, assaulted by hands red with 



SPEAR, 207 

treason, a victim of the malign and cruel spirit which has 
so long afflicted them. They will understand, and the 
world will understand, that slavery is at the "bottom of 
the causes which have murdered our President. And, 
my hearers, when the sad news shall cross the water, and 
fly over the nations of Europe, all the lovers of liberty 
will stand aghast with surprise. They will join with us 
in our public sorrows. The excitement and grief occa- 
sioned by this fearful tragedy will be world-wide. The 
memory of the scene will last as long as time endures. 
Alas ! alas ! for my country, when her Presidents, her 
men in high office, her patriots, her good and great men, 
must fall before the dagger of the traitorous assassin! 
Let the power of God expurgate such a soil, if need be, 
with the dire bolts of his providential vengeance ! Let 
the power of God kill the last relic of treason, and drive 
the accursed monster from this fair land ! Shame, eter- 
nal shame on the men who have the least sympathy with 
this awful wickedness ! They are are not fit to inhabit a 
country they so grossly dishonor. 

4. Looking now, in the fourth place, at the nation in 
its present status, and in reference to the duties which 
now press upon every loyal heart, I am happy to say 
to you that, though the President is dead, the nation 
lives. The blow which, in being aimed at him, was meant 
for the nation, will miss its mark. We have heard in these 
latter days of happy feeling not a few exhortations that wo- 
should conciliate the rebels and deal very tenderly with 
them ; that, having conquered them, and spent millions 
upon millions of money and thousands upon thousands of 
lives for this purpose, we should now treat the conflict as 
a mere collision of ideas, and be careful not to punish the 
leaders, even Jefferson Davis himself, should they fall into 
our power. My conciliation embraces the folio *ing pro- 

13* 



298 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LT2nCOLN. 

gramme : — First, I would give this rebellion war to the 
knife, and nothing but war, till the last vestige of it is 
dead. This I believe the short and only safe road to final 
peace. I would then, secondly, extend a generous and 
liberal amnesty to the masses of the people, upon the con- 
dition that they re-organize their State governments upon 
the basis of absolute loyalty, discarding traitors and aban- 
doning slavery, holding them in the meantime subject to a 
military government till they resume their proper relation 
to the Union upon these terms. I would then, thirdly, 
divide the responsible leaders and prime authors of the 
rebellion into three classes, according to the grade of their 
guilt. The first of which and the smallest — of which 
Jefferson Davis is a conspicuous example — I would hang 
by the neck till they are dead ! The second class of 
which, and a larger class, I would expel from the country, 
and send them forth as fugitives over the face of the earth. 
The third of which, and a still larger class, I would dis- 
possess of all political power, denying to them the right to 
vote, and making them ineligible to any office of profit or 
trust under the government of the United States. I would 
visit these penalties upon these men for the enormous 
crimes which they have committed. Justice requires it. 
The future safety of the nation demands it. Away with 
that mawkish sympathy that ignores justice and ruins 
government. It is alike stupid and cruel. Such, in brief, 
is my conception of the great and pressing duties which 
belong to the hour, and in the faithful discharge of which 
we may confidently hope to save our country. I repeat, 
our President is dead ; we can no longer be availed of his 
counsels ; he has done his last acts and said his last words ; 
and now what we have to do, while mourning the sad 
loss, is to take good care of that country and those institu- 
tions to which he gave his rare powers. May the mantle 



SPI^AR. 209 

of his wisdom fall upon his official successor. Andrew 
Johnson is as yet an untried man in this sphere, yet I have 
strong hopes that the nation will not be disappointed in 
either his capacity or integrity. ] accept him as the 
President of these United States. I intend to honor and 
obey him as the minister of God, and do what I can to 
support the government of my country as administered by 
him. Let us, my friends, lay aside all partizan animosities, 
and unite together as one people in again bringing peace 
and prosperity to this land. This, I am persuaded, would 
be the advice of our President dead could he speak to us 
from that world whither his spirit had gone. 

5. Lifting our thoughts finally above all the scenes of 
earth, and contemplating God as sitting upon the throne 
of eternal providence, permitting and ordering all things 
after the counsel of his own will, I advise you, while dis- 
charging the duties of the present, to trust his providence 
for the future. His providence gave us our President, 
and preserved him to us in the days of our greatest dark- 
ness. He was the pupil and the creature of providence. 
He sat at the feet of providence, and sought to walk in its 
ways. This providence has permitted what seems to us 
an untimely fall. I cannot explain it — I shall not try- 
Yet I am comforted with the thought that God has made 
no mistake. Under his providence all men are immortal 
till their work is done; and then they go the way of all 
the earth by an arrangement which in heaven is no error, 
however painful it may be to man. Our late President 
had finished his allotted task, and well and truly has he 
done so. If we, his survivors, trust providence and do our 
duty, God will complete this work and preserve us by 
other hands than those we had anticipated. Hitherto he 
has made our cause his care, imposing upon us a severe 
discipline for our good, postponing our final triumph till 



300 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

the ends of his providence should be realized ; and now 
he has permitted this great apparent calamity for some 
wise reason, perhaps now perfectly simple to the enlarged 
intelligence of our President in heaven. On* earth we 
may never see this reason ; yet the Lord knows, and this 
should suffice for us. Let us bow in faith and weep in 
hope. God's government is not dead. God's providence 
is not dead. These will prevail when empires perish. 
No fiendish hand, can strike the supremacy of God's throne. 
]No assassin's shot or traitor's dagger can suspend his con- 
trol in human affairs. 

" God moves in a mysterious way 
His wonders to perform ; 
He plants his footsteps in the sea 
And rides upon the storm. 
Deep in unfathomable mines 
Of never-failing skill, 
He treasures up his bright designs, 
And works his sovereign will." 

Such, my friends, are the remarks which I have thought 
fitting to the occasion. I have prepared them amid the 
haste and excitement of this soul-stirring hour. I have 
had ro time to revise them, or recast my words. I have 
spoken to you just as I feel. And now I ask you, one 
and all, to be solemnly reminded of the fact that you are 
mortal, that your days are uncertain, that soon you must 
resign all the trusts of earth, and appear before the Judge 
of quick and dead. I point you to the Bible for your 
light, and for your salvation to Him whose atoning blood 
cleanseth from all sin. I hope — from what I have heard 
I am led to believe — that Abraham Lincoln was a Chris- 
tian, a man of prayer ; and hence that his sudden and ap- 
palling death has been to him sudden glory. We leave 
the fallen with God. We beseech the God of grace to 



6PEAR. 301 

make this providence a blessing to our hearts. We com- 
mend our suffering country to his care and keeping. We 
here pledge ourselves to each other, and call upon high 
heaven to witness the covenant, that to the cause for 
which Abraham Lincoln lived, and in which he died, we 
will be true to our last breath ; we will never desert the 
Stars and the Stripes ; we will never lay clown the sword 
till the supremacy of this government is vindicated ; we 
will never pause till the daring criminals who have 
brought this evil upon the land are themselves brought to 
merited justice. God helping us, we will crush treason 
and suitably punish traitors, cost what it may. Just now 
we are in no mood to be trifled with by that senseless 
philanthropism, that shallow and almost soulless senti- 
mentality, that has no foundation in the moral nature of 
man, and none in the moral government of God. We are 
not dealing with wasps — perfectly harmless if we let them 
alone — but with traitors, with the enemies of public order, 
with men who have virtually raised the black flag over 
our defenceless and helpless soldiers captured in war, a 
fit representative of whom has just murdered our Presi- 
dent. Such are the men who are at the head of this re- 
bellion and with whom we have to do, and our duty in the 
premises is as clear as light. May the God of heaven 
prepare us for the work and crown it with his blessing. 



SERMON XVII. 



REV. ROBERT LOWRY. 



" And the victory that day "was turned into mourning, unto all the peo- 
ple." — 2 Samuel xix. 2. 

You do not expect a sermon to-day. I have no sermon 
to give yon. The air is laden with sorrow, and our hearts 
are plunged together in one common grief. The mind re- 
fuses to think of anything but the great public calamity. 
Our dear, good President is dead ! We are all mourners to- 
day. It is not for me to comfort you ; we can only weep 
together in our overwhelming family bereavement. 

We have looked forward to this day as the Resurrection 
Sunday of our Lord. We had adjusted our minds to the con- 
templation of the event, which broke the seals of the dark 
world, and opened up life and immortality to the sons of 
men. But the smile has fled from our faces to-day. We 
weep as at a burial, though we stand by the empty grave 
of our Saviour. There is no jubilant music from the organ 
to-day. There is no glad song of victory on our tongues 
to-day. No bright flowers of gladness decorate our church 
to-day, but, instead, we sob forth our funereal dirges. We 
cover our faces and drop our bitterest tears. We hang 
these walls with the deep drapery of woe. We droop our 

303 



30-i DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

beautiful flag over the pulpit*, and gaze on its craped folds 
till our eyes cannot see it for the tears that blind them. 
Why does the sun shine to-day ? It seems to mock us 
with its brightness. We could have wished that the heav- 
ens had been hung in black, and the clouds had wept 
their sympathy. We have no heart for sunshine. We 
are prostrate in our profoundest grief. 

We did not know how much we loved him. We have 
talked of his geniality, his tender-heartedness, his patient 
endurance, his broad common sense ; but we thought of 
these qualities with the quiet appreciation which attends 
familiarity. We only learn his great worth when he is 
taken from us. We feel now how good a man he was, 
how great, how noble. 

Four years ago the people called him to preside over 
a country drifting toward a whirlpool. It was a time 
when the largest experience, the clearest statesmanship, 
and the most intelligent tact were scarcely adequate to 
meet the appalling demands of the crisis. He went to 
Washington, taking with him neither polish, nor state- 
craft, nor the learning of the schools; but he carried there 
a lofty patriotism, a sterling honesty, and a full American 
manhood. The work before him was not one of courtly 
genuflexion in the reception room. The time for fresh 
thoughts and manly vigor had come. lie was God's gift 
for the crisis. We did not all think so then. The surge 
of popular excitement sometimes swept far beyond the 
cool stand-point of the President. When rebellion seemed 
to be strengthening itself in every point, and even assert- 
ing superior prowess on the battle-field, there were not 
wanting those who clamored for this policy and that, and 
poured the vials of their hasty anger on the head of the 
patient President. But no menace of friend or foe could 
drive him into a policy, when the essential elements of a 



lowry. 305 

policy that would endure had not } T et germinated. lie 
stood amid the conflict of passion and opinion, as one 
who felt that the issues of the problem were with him. 
And with this temper he has filled the years of his ad- 
ministration. He had learnt that " he that ruleth his 
spirit is better than he that taketh a city." How well he 
has performed his task, a mourning nation is now ready to 
acknowledge. 

There was not a nerve in his body that did not thrill 
with love for the Union. He lived only for the Union. 
If a commander was appointed or deposed, it was that 
the Union might the better be defended. If a change 
was made in the cabinet, it was in subserviency to the 
interests of the Union. If the just demands of the gov- 
ernment on foreign powers were held in abeyance, the in- 
tegrity of the Union was the all-controlling motive. In the 
early stages of the rebellion he announced that, with slav- 
ery or without slavery, the Union must be saved. To this 
sole end he gave his wearisome days and sleepless nights. 
For this consummation he issued his proclamations, or 
withheld his signature from the laws of Congress. While 
it was possible to preserve the unity of the nation without 
invading the institutions of the States, he forbore to in- 
terfere with domestic laws. When it was evident that 
the salvation of the Union demanded the extirpation of 
human bondage, he did not hesitate to write the immor- 
tal paper that gave freedom to four millions of enslaved 
humanity. 

If the people were slow to give him all their confidence, 
they learnt at last to look to him as their worthily-trusted 
chief. It is seen now that he was the appointed instru- 
ment of God, more than even the choice of the people. 
When this conviction fastened itself on the popular mind, 
it was not difficult to determine that, in the midst of an 



306 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

unsettled struggle, we should have no change of rulers. 
There were those who deemed him yet to be below the lev- 
el of the crisis. But the popular will swept them away like 
chaff. We said that the man who had conducted ns 
through four vears of fearful war, and made himself the 
target for traitorous hatred, should carry ns through to its 
completion. We elected him for a second term. Not 
even an opponent possessed of extraordinary personal 
accomplishments could divert the instinct of the popular 
heart. All classes accepted the decision of the ballot. 
We gave ourselves up to no vehement rejoicings, but w T e 
cherished a calm satisfaction in the result. We felt that 
the country was more safe in the hands of its now tried 
leader, than it could be under any new administration. 
We looked hopefully for the end. 

Nor did we wait long. The expression of the popular 
will gave nerve to the government, the army, and the 
people. Faction was silenced, and loyalty became more 
clearly defined. Rebel sympathizers slunk out of sight, 
and military combinations closed more effectively on the 
focal points of the insurrection. With crushing weight 
fell the final blows. City after city was taken ; fort after 
fort captured ; army after army beaten ; till the whole 
loval land shouted for victory, and gave thanks to God 
that our beloved country was saved. How gaily our flags 
leaped up to the mast-head ! How joyfully our guns 
thundered out the rejoicings of the people ! How sym- 
pathetically our hearts fluttered with the restored banner 
of Sumter! The heavens were growing brighter every 
hour. Charleston, the cradle of the rebellion, was a deso- 
late ruin. Richmond, that became its coflio, was a cap- 
tured city. The insurgent government were ileeing be- 
fore our arms. The rebel chief- had become a fugitive from 
the justice that pursued him. The bastard rag that had 



lowhy. 307 

flaunted its insolent folds in the sight of "Washington, hid 
itself from the face of the national banner. The rebel 
hosts that had defended the strongholds of treason for four 
years, were conquered and shattered. From the subdued 
capital of the Slave Confederacy, the President sent dis- 
patches to the federal city. O, how glad we have been 
over the victory ! What blessing God has been pouring 
upon us, till we could scarcely find room to contain it ! 

And now, behold these emblems of woe ! Look at 
these strong men weeping ! The nation that two days ago 
surged with joy, now heaves with unutterable grief. The 
flags creep sadly down to half-mast. There is crape on 
our banner to-day, and crape on our hearts. We are over- 
whelmed in our great affliction. Wc are unable to think 
calmly, or speak without quivering lips. We are in a 
paralysis of sorrow. It has come to us in a moment. It 
has smitten us when we were most jubilant. "The vic- 
tory tin's day is turned into mourning, unto all the 
people." Would that it were only a rebel son that had 
been slain. But the head of the nation has been snatched 
from us. The friend of the people has fallen. We have 
lost our father. The kind, the good, the loved Abraham 
Lincoln lies dead at the capital. Alas ! how can we bear 
a grief like this ! 

Shall I speak to you of the honored dead ? His glo- 
rious deeds are known to us all. He needs no eulogy 
from the pulpit. His sublime life is cherished in the 
hearts of his countrymen. His death of martyrdom will 
cover his name with immortelles. Shall I tell you that 
he was patriotic? You know that every heart-beat was 
devotion to the country. He lived for his country. He 
died for his country. Who else could have done her 
so much good in the terrible ordeal of civil war ? Whose 
death could have brought her to such bitter tears, 83 his ? 



3° 8 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

Shall I tell yon of liis humanity f The eolumns of the 
press beam with the records of his tenderness and sym- 
pathy. How pathetic was that exhibition of his loving 
heart at City Point. Six thousand sick and wounded 
soldiers lay in the hospitals. The President was on his 
way from Richmond to Washington. The pressure of 
public business could not deprive him of an interview 
with these brave defenders of the republic. He moved 
down the long lines of prostrate men — visiting each cot — 
taking the sick soldier by the hand — lajnng his fingers on 
the pale brow — speaking a kind word to this one and 
that — till he had shed sunshine in every invalid's heart. 
In the midst of this philanthropic work, an agent of the 
Christian Commission approached him with a request that 
he would give them the pleasure of entertaining him in 
their tent. " No," replied the warm-hearted President, 
" I have only so many hours to stay at City Point, and 
all that time must be devoted to the soldiers." Dearer to 
him were the answering smiles of those wounded soldiers, 
than all the honors which official dignitaries could be- 
stow upon him. How feelingly will those brave men 
now cherish the memory of that visit, with its tender 
hand-pressure, and words of aifectionate sympathy ! 

Shall I tell you of his religions character? This, from 
its very nature, has engaged our attention less than his 
patriotism and his humanity. And yet, how deeply are 
we concerned in it this morning. We long, as Christians, 
to follow him beyond the river into whose waters he so 
suddenly entered. For him there was no death-bed pre- 
paration. The blessing of a sick chamber, granted to 
many a soul for reflection and faith, was not vouchsafed 
to him. Can we look with a cheerful gaze through the 
death mist that closed so suddenly around him ? 

1 venture to express my conviction that Abraham Liu- 



LOWKY. 30L) 

coin was one of the Lord's people, h is impossible to 
penetrate the inner life of a man in his position, as we can 
tli at of a private and familiar citizen. But there are at 
our command a few important elements, strengthening a 
conviction that he had "passed from death unto life." 
Our lamented President is known to have been a man of 
prayer. It may not be that when, in 1861, he uttered his 
last request in Springfield, "pray for me," he grasped the 
full blessing for which he asked. But never did Christians 
pray for a ruler more sincerely and more importunately 
than for our over-burdened President during the last four 
years. And if the White House has not heretofore been 
regarded as holding intercourse with the court of heaven, 
it is certain that for months past its walls have looked on 
the bent form of the Chief Magistrate invoking the grace 
of Almighty God. 

A clergyman in ]STew York, having business with the 
President, sought an interview early in the morning. 
Being detained in the waiting-room longer than seemed to 
be indispensable at that time of day, he inquired the reason 
of the President's non-appearance. He was answered, 
that this hour was employed by the President in the read- 
ing of the Scriptures and prayer, and no interruption 
would be permitted until these sacred exercises had closed. 

When little Willie Lincoln passed from earth, the mind 
of the bereaved father wa deeply affected by thoughts of 
death. But the vortex of public duties held him from 
pursuing the serious thoughts to which his mind had been 
directed. But when he stood on the battle-field of Gettys- 
burg, and beheld the graves ot the brave men who had 
gone down to death for the principles of which he was the 
exponent, such a sense of the presence i t God and of his 
own unworthiness took possession of his soul, as to over- 
whelm him. From that day he dated his entrance into a 
new life. 



310 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

1 am told that, a few months ago, a lady, visiting the 
Presidential mansion, was invited to a seat in the family 
carriage. In the course of the ride, the conversation 
turned on the subject of religion. The President was 
deeply interested, and begged the visitor to describe, as 
clearly as possible, what was that peculiar state of mind in 
which one might know himself to be a Christian. She 
repeated to him the simple story of the cross ; and ex- 
plained, that when a poor sinner, conscious that he could 
not save himself, looked to Jesus, and saw in his death a 
full atonement for the sinner's sins, and believed that 
Christ's death was accepted as a siibstiiute for the sinner's 
death, he felt himself to have been delivered from Divine 
wrath, and to be " at peace with God through our Lord 
Jesus Christ." The President replied, in a tone of satis- 
faction, "That is just the way I feel ." 

Who can read his second Inaugural, and fail to see the 
evidences of a Christian spirit ? What State paper, in all 
our official literature, ever revealed such sense of Divine 
justice, and such sublime faith in God ? It reads as if the 
writer had been wandering over the earthly boundary, 
and drank of the spirit of that better land of which so soon 
he was to be a resident. 

And now I come to meet a question which will disturb 
every Christian mind. The President was shot in the 
theatre. We would have had it otherwise. Pulpits will 
speak of it. The press will comment on it. The people 
in the streets will talk about it. Let us look at it with a 
calm judgment. 

It cannot be said that the President went to the theatre 
because he loved to be there. He was not, in the common 
acceptation of the term, a theatre-goer. It is known that 
he went with great reluctance. He was in no state of 
mind to enjoy a scene like that. But the newspapers had 



LOWKY. 3H 

announced -that the President and General Grant would 
be there on that evening. The people thronged the house 
to do honor to the great men who had saved the country 
General Grant, who had no time to waste in amusement.-, 
left Washington in the evening train, to superintend the 
removal of his family to Philadelphia. The President 
knew that the people would be disappointed, if they saw 
neither of the faces that they delighted to honor. Weary 
as he was, he decided to go. He went, nol to see a com- 
edy, but to gratify the people. If he had a weakness, it 
was that he might contribute to the joy of the people. For 
the people he had spent four toilsome years in lofty self- 
abnegation. For the people he gave up his life on the 
night of that fatal Friday. 

There is another consideration. In all the countries of 
Christendom, the rulers are expected to visit the theatre 
as an act of state. We may deplore the custom, but it is, 
nevertheless, universal. It is an observance that stretches 
back through long generations. There is a supposed 
necessity for it. It is only there that the Executive 
can receive the formal acclaims of all classes of citizens. 
There they feel free to give him the tribute of popular 
plaudits. They cannot so recognize him at church, nor 
in public receptions, nor in casual appearances abroad. 
The President's box, like the reception room, is an ar- 
rangement of state policy. It is an established point of 
contact between the chief magistrate and the people. 
? From a religious stand-point, we cannot approve of it. But 
we must not confound the act of the President, prompted 
by high considerations of state, with the visit of a private 
citizen, moved thereunto by the low desire of a mere self- 
ish gratification. 

With what profound awe we contemplate this mystery 
of permissive providence ! We close our mouths beforo 



312 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

the mandate of the Almighty — " Be still, and know that 
I am God." We cannot understand it. We can only re- 
ceive it. God employs his instruments according to his 
own sovereign purpose. His principle of selection con- 
founds all our philosophy. He creates — he destroys. If 
Moses was the best man to form a great people for a 
higher nationality, Joshua was a better one to lead them 
into the promised land. God chose Abraham Lincoln 
because no other could do his work so well. What if his 
work were done, and other hands were needed to per- 
fect what he so successfully begun % We have seen too 
plainly the goodness and wisdom of God in our national 
affairs, to doubt that he will sanctify to us* this awful ca- 
lamity. We have learnt to acknowledge God in triumph 
and in defeat, as never before in our history. And God 
is bringing us closer to himself in this severest of all his 
dealings. He gave us the best of Presidents. He has 
taken away our prop, that we might all the more trustfully 
lean on him. That he will cause "the wrath of man to 
praise him," who can question ? " He hath not dealt so 
with any nation " as with ours. In this unparalleled af- 
fliction he will not desert us. Let us look for the good 
hand of our God in this calamitous visitation. The 
tender heart that has been laid low by violence, may have 
shrunk from the stern duties of the coming time. He 
was so free from bitter vindictiveness, so prone to len- 
ient dealing even with his enemies, that even the just in- 
fliction of punishment on the worst of traitors, might 
have been too hard a task for a nature so generous and 
charitable. The good he has done will embalm his name 
to the latest generation. Thank God that he ever blessed 
us with Abraham Lincoln ! 

And who is this new instrument of God, into whose 
hands thus suddenly and fearfully has been cast the lead- 



LOWRY. 313 

ership of the nation % No man would liave chosen him 
for President, but God has thrust him on a prostrate, bewil- 
dered people. The scene of the inauguration day filled 
us with shame, and now affects us with apprehension, 
ljut, has God mistaken his instrument, or been foiled in 
his purpose? Already we hear voices that dispel the 
dark foreboding. General Burnside, Senator Foster, 
Representative Odell, speak words in the popular ear that 
lift up the new President from the shadow that enveloped 
him. We will rally around the new man whom God has 
given to us. If we prayed for President Lincoln, let us 
pray all the more for President Johnson. We know there 
is a providence in all this, and we cannot doubt that God 
will interpret it to us in his own good time. 

Two qualities loom before us in the character of our 
new chief. First, he is /patriotic. In the dark hour when 
the faithful were few, he loved his country too much to 
love his section. In the very dawning of the insurrec- 
tion, he stood firm in his place, and denounced the arch 
traitors who were plotting their country's ruin. He has 
been tried in the hottest fires of persecution, and betrays 
no alloy in the gold of his patriotism. We may trust him 
as possessing the full measure of devotion which the 
warmest patriot could demand. 

Secondly, he is radical. We live in times when child's 
play is criminal. Andrew Johnson has " understanding 
of the times." He has measured the atrociousness of re- 
bellion. He has sounded the wickedness of slavery. He 
will make no compromises with traitors. He will not plane 
down treason into a mere difference of opinion. He is a 
bold man to meet a bold evil. President Johnson has no 
glove on his hand. President Johnson has no velvet in 
his mouth. Treason, to him, is the worst of crimes, and 
the traitor will struggle against justice in vain. 



314 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

See the effect on the people of this dastard blow ! ¥e 
are melted down into unity. Who speaks a word against 
Lincoln now ? Who stands aloof from the government 
now ? Who dares sympathize with traitors now ? We 
have rubbed out our party lines, and fly together as if 
nothing had divided us. In a common fraternity of suf- 
fering, we weep as with one sorrow, and burn as with one 
indignation. The government may do anything now 
against treason, and the people will approve the righteous 
deed. 

We have lost all sentiment of clemency. Satan over- 
leaped himself when he lifted the deadly weapon. If we 
indulged mercy to rebels before, now we have none. 
There is one deep, loud cry for justice ! The animus of 
the rebellion has betrayed itself. The bullet that entered 
our loved President's brain, lodged in the heart of the 
people. It rankles there. It needed the assassin's foul 
deed to nerve us to the punishment of traitors. I speak 
not the name of this heaven-abandoned wretch. I call 
him The Assassin. He has lifted us to a new view of 
this colossal conspiracy. We see the unmitigated turpi- 
tude of the huge crime. It is the same spirit that buried 
our soldiers at Bull Run with faces downward, and made 
trinkets of their bones — that starved our unhappy prison- 
ers in the pens of Andersonville — that butchered our men 
in cold blood at Fort Pillow — that devoted the peaceful 
inhabitants of Lawrence to indiscriminate massacre — that 
froze our veterans to death on Belle Island — that crowded 
our officers in the damp dungeons of Richmond, till you 
could gather the mold from their beards by the handful ! 
And we call on President Johnson to close his hard, ham- 
mer hand, and bring it down with its heaviest blows, till 
he shall crush in the brazen front of this infernal rebellion, 
and hurl its foul carcass from the land it has polluted ! 



LOWRY. 315 

This land is not large enough to hold the leaders of the 
rebellion. The flag they have sought to dishonor should 
not be allowed to cover them. They have forfeited, a 
thousand times over, the mercy of the government thev 
assailed. And this last and vilest culmination of their 
crimes puts them beyond the possibility of pardon. Let 
ns make this soil red-hot to the foot of every traitor. Let 
the warm breath of our holy indignation sweep from our 
cities every rebel sympathizer. Let us vow, in God's 
house to-day, that treason shall be destroyed, trunk and 
branch, root and rootlet, till not one hand be left to give 
the sword such a vintage of blood again. Then will our 
land be a land of peace and freedom. Then will our na- 
tion be the joy of the whole earth ! 

14 



SERMON XVIII. 



REV. ALBERT S. HUNT. 



" The- wisdom of God was in him to do judgment." — 1 Kings iii. 28. 

We meet in tears. The darkness and the grief which 
have made us faint have fallen upon myriads besides 
" for in every house there is one dead." Never since the 
world began has heaven looked down, at any one time, 
upon so many mourning assemblies as crowd the Chris- 
tian temples of this land to-day. Why is it so? Is not 
this the festive day when believers in " Jesus and the 
resurrection" should adorn their altars with garlands, 
and sing joyful anthems ? And have we not heard too, 
since we last met, such tidings of victory over an armed 
foe as almost never before cheered the hearts of a loyal 
and God-fearing people ? All true ! but our Easter an- 
thems give place to dirges, and our " victories are turned 
into mourning unto all the people " to-day, because 
Abraham Lincoln has been assassinated. What do I say I 
Strange, sad words ! Are we in the midst of a troubled 
vision ? God of our fathers, have mercy upon us ! 

We mourn the death of one of the most commanding 
personages of HISTORY. His life has been a magnificent 

317 



318 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

success. I will not attempt, by words, to prove this state- 
ment. " If you seek his monument, look about you." 
The Union is saved ! 

Where now shall we find an explanation of this tri- 
umphant success ? "The wisdom of God was in him to do 
judgment." That this text furnishes the only full response 
to our inquiry, will become more apparent if we seek the 
explanation elsewhere. 

Is it to be found in the essential worth of his charac- 
ter f It is too early to attempt a finished portraiture, or 
even a full outline, but a glance at a few features which 
most attract us will serve the purpose of our argument. 

He had a clear, strong intellect. This was manifest in 
the ease with which he grappled with great public ques- 
tions. If his logical processes were not always conducted 
in obedience to the rules of the schools, his conclusions 
would yet silence the most orderly thinkers. 

The same clearness was always evident in his easy in- 
tercourse with others, when his mind was unbent and at 
play. 

He was also justly distinguished for the tenderness of 
his heart. This was indicated, not only in his care to oc- 
casion no needless suffering in the discharge of his execu- 
tive duties, but also in numberless words and ways which 
were unofficial. You remember the touching letter he 
wrote to the mother in Boston, who had lost her sons in 
the cause of the country. His address at Gettysburg, 
remarkable as it is for the grandeur of its thought, is even 
more so for the tenderness he breathed into it. And only 
a few days ago, when at City Point, on his way from Rich- 
mond to Washington, he refused multiplied invitations 
which promised ease and entertainment, because " he had 
only time," as he said, " to go through the hospital and 



HUNT. 31<j 

speak to the sick and wounded boys." Thus he passed 
from one cot to another, clasping the hands of such as 
had them, and pressing the foreheads of the handless, 
smiling through his tears upon all, and thanking them 
for their self-sacrificing patriotism. 

He was a man, too, of more than ordinary conscientious- 
ness. Here we find the explanation of the hesitancy which 
appears, at times, in his action. A legion of politicians 
might beset him and urge him to effort, but having heard 
them all, he would take counsel of his conscience, and 
perhaps still remain inactive. He would do nothing un- 
less he could see clearly what it was right to do. Here, 
also, we find the explanation of his undeviating firmness, 
when once he had become convinced of the rectitude of 
his measures. 

Thus have we touched the salient points of his character. 
The study has indeed been superficial, but sufficiently 
thorough to convince all candid inquirers that we must 
look elsewhere for a full explanation of his success. We 
have discovered elements of character which exalt him. 
to a place among the truly great, and without which he 
could never have succeeded, but which must be largely 
supplemented before we are furnished with a credible so- 
lution of his wonderful mastery. 

But again. "We may be told that although the secret 
of Abraham Lincoln's success has not yet been discovered, 
we are not driven to the explanation suggested by the text 
as the only alternative, since there is another method of 
detecting the hiding-place of the power of imperial men. 
We discover that all such personages are perfectly familiar 
with. the elements they have to mould and control, and 
that they also have a commanding position above their 
fellow-men, in consequence of greatness which was born 



320 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

in them — a kind of genius which is beyond the reach of 
analysis. They know all about the common people, and 
yet are made greater and nobler than they, by towering 
gifts. 

Shall we find here the explanation we are seeking \ It 
is .rue that he knew all about the materials he was called 
to mould and control. Without the social elevation which 
results from aristocratic associations, born in a humble 
home and reared with the common people, he thoroughly 
understood all their wants, failings, foibles, and excellen- 
cies. He had, too, a certain native greatness of soul, 
which gave him a commanding position above the crowd. 
He was of them, yet not of them. He had a strange 
power over all who approached him, which did not find 
its spring in the arts of statesmanship, nor in familiarity 
with the great models of history. His soul was broad, 
deep, and lofty. He had a genius for command. All this 
is true of him, and if it had not been true he would have 
failed, yet it does not fully solve the marvel of his suc- 
cess. Had he been called to preside over thirty millions 
of people during a period of peace, such powers would 
surely have been no more than equal to his duty, but he 
entered upon his work at the opening of a vast civil war, 
whose close was coincident with the close of his career. 
The unknown quantities of the problem he was called to 
solve were well-nigh infinite in number, and the common 
processes of elimination were too slow to serve the 
demands of the work. A power was required which 
could arrive at results with electric haste, but which 
would neither flash nor thunder on its way. Or, to use 
another illustration, his work has often been as delicate as 
that of the dagnerreotypist, whose pictures would quickly 
fade if he did not gild them, but who applies his gold in 
the form of a solution. His vast abilities have been em- 



HUNT. Z'i 1 

ployed, but not according to common methods. Held, as 
it were, in solution by heavenly wisdom, they have been 
poured out in blessings on the land. 

Elilm declared to Job that " great men are not always 
wise ; " but the great man whose loss Ave mourn to-day 
was one of whom we may truly say " The wisdom of God 
was in him to do judgment." 



Why now should we hesitate to accept the statement 
of the text as the true explanation of his success ? wab 
there not a religiousness in his wisdom which cannot be 
accounted natural % His conscientiousness, of which we 
have spoken, was perhaps chiefly a natural endowment ; 
but he was more than conscientious. He wished to obey 
right, not only because it was right, but because he saw 
the relation of all that is right to the righteousness of 
God. He obeyed conscience, not simply because he re- 
cognized its eminent authority, but because he felt it to 
be the voice of God in the soul of man. "He did not 
care to have the Lord on his side, but did most sincerely 
desire to be always found on the Lord's side." All this, 
I repeat, was not of nature. " The wisdom of God was in 
him." J^or need we wonder at this, if we believe that 
the God of Israel is our God, and that there is power in 
prayer. It is evident that he was not unwilling to be di- 
rected by the Almighty, for when he left his home in 
Springfield to enter upon his presidential duty, he asked 
the prayers of his neighbors for his success. Now con- 
sider what multitudes have been interceding for him ever 
since that day ! Was there ever a man for whose success 
so many earnest prayers were offered i If God has not 
heard these prayers our faith is vain ; if he has heard them, 
it is easy to understand how the " wisdom of God" came to 



322 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

be in him. The prayers of millions have aided materially 
to make him what he was. 

It is well worthy of our thought, too, that he was not 
only the gift of God in answer to prayer, but he was two 
gifts in one. Four years ago, the ears of the Almighty 
were continually filled with petitions from two classes of 
suppliants, concerning two great subjects which we now 
perceive were only one, but which then seemed, to the 
majority even of the intelligent and good among us, to be 
distinct. On the one hand, we were beseeching God to 
interpose for us, and preserve the Union of the States ; 
while on the other, there were earnest cries and tears 
from an oppressed race dwelling within our borders, who 
had long been pleading for liberty, and were moved as 
by inspiration to a new trust that the time of their deliv- 
erance was drawing near. God heard us all. He heard 
us, for our cause was the cause of order and of law, — 
his own cause. He heard the prayers of the enslaved, for 
it is his wont to have mercy upon such. There was a 
people of the African race in the olden time, oppressed 
under Persian rule, who, having heard of Jehovah through 
the ministry of fugitive Jews, cried unto him, and " he 
sent them a savior, and a great one," in the person of 
Alexander. And now, in answer to the cries of an op- 
pressed people of the same race, he sends another mighty 
deliverer in the person of Abraham Lincoln ; one who was 
a more efficient savior for them, because he was also a 
gift of God to us, in answer to our prayers ; and who, as 
the secpiel demonstrates, has achieved far greater things 
for us than he could have done if he had not been the 
great emancipator. We can never sufficiently adore the 
Divine goodness, which has not only liberated the en- 
slaved and preserved the Union of the States, but has also 
made one man the instrument in the accomplishment of 



hunt. 320 

both these stupendous results. lie might have given us 
a leader made after the sternest Jacksonian model, and 
endowed him with ability to save the Union by the force 
of an iron will, without paying special regard to the ques- 
tion of slavery. Such a man would have been the very 
gift multitudes thought desirable. Then lie might have 
raised up a deliverer for the enslaved from among them- 
selves, who would have inspired his race for the work of 
a bloody insurrection. This was the fearful method by 
which many of us believed their liberty would be secured. 

Had God thus dealt with us, how entirely different 
would have been the present condition of all concerned. 
True, the Union would have been preserved, and the op- 
pressed would have been delivered from bondage ; but 
how much more perplexing for us would have been the 
problem of reconstruction, and how much less hopeful 
would have been the future of the emancipated race. 
Then, too, we should have been without the ennobling 
consciousness which now is ours, that our blood has been 
spilled and our treasure lavished, not only in defence of 
the Constitution, but also in the solution of a vast moral 
question. This fact, which passes into history, is one of 
that class of grand facts whose grandeur increases with the 
growth of the ages. It is like a mountain whose summit 
is covered with perpetual snow, — glorious always, but 
most glorious, not when we are standing at its base, but 
when we behold it towering in the distance. 

Abraham Lincoln was God's gift to us all ! Nor need 
we wonder that he served us all so well, when we consider 
that countless prayers were ottered for his success to the 
Divine Redeemer, who was a full Saviour for the Jews 
only because he became our Saviour also. The one gift 
of God to us all — he has made us one. We are all free ! 
Nor should this excite our wonder when we consider that 



324: DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

the wisdom of that Divine Emancipator and Harmonizer 
was in him, of whom the apostle says, " He is our peace 
who hath made both one, and broken down the middle 
wall of partition between us." 

But he is dead ! It is a signal fact in our history, that 
Adams and Jeiferson, two men who had occupied the 
presidential chair, w T ere removed by death on the same 
day, and this day, too, was the fiftieth anniversary of 
the nation's independence ; but the period appointed of 
God for the removal of our late President was not less 
remarkable. Two days ago, as we doubt hot, the identical 
old banner of the republic which was first dishonored by 
armed treason, was raised over the ruins of Fort Sumter 
— a token to all the world that the nation's life was saved ! 
Its savior's work was done ! He was assassinated on 
the evening of that very day. Probably he was not con- 
scious for an instant after the infliction of the fatal wound, 
but his spirit lingered with us until after the rays of one 
rising sun had gilded anew the dear old flag. Then it 
was a fitting time for him to die, for his fame shall be like 
the glory of the sun in its rising. 

We cannot discover the full meaning of this sad 
providence, yet it clearly conveys to us an invaluable 
lesson concerning the stability of porular government. 
A new and most severe test having been applied, the struc- 
ture is proved to be as solid as the granite hills. Once 
our -enemies told us we were not strong enough to con- 
tend successfully with a foreign foe. This we disproved 
fifty years ago. Then, we were told that it would be im- 
possible for us to conquer a domestic enemy. After a pro- 
tracted period of the fiercest conflict the world ever saw, 
we have just now entered the capital of the traitors, and 



HUNT. : > .L , ."» 

broken their military power. Tims again the ill-omen:-'] 
prophets of both hemispheres have been brought to con- 
fusion. There was yet one other declaration of the carp- 
ing defamers of popular government to be proved false. 
They have asserted time and again, that a military power 
sufficiently lar^e to overcome treason, would never sub- 
mit to the claims of the constitution, but would become a 
law unto itself, and establish a despotism upon the ruins 
ot civil authority. We did not believe this, but we did 
not certainty know that it was false until this awful assas- 
sination of our Chief Magistrate opened the way lor a 
demonstration which will silence the base calumny now 
and forever. The greatest captain of the age, and the 
idol of the nation, fresh from the field of his grandest 
triumph, stands in the presence of all the people. Has a 
single tono-ue lisnecl a desire to exalt him to a throne and 
crown him as the first of a new line of monarchs ? JSTot 
one ! The Constitution designates another as our chief 
ruler. It is enough — the people hail him ! You re- 
member the first expression of the nation's purpose to de- 
fend the flag, after it had been insulted at Charleston. 
Kor will you forget that solemn day of last November, 
when, after years of the severest discipline, the people 
declared anew, with the silent eloquence of the ballot, 
their undying love for the country. Both these expres- 
sions of the popular heart, were truly sublime, but neither 
impresses me so profoundly as this steady bearing of the 
nation during the past thirty hours. I am proud of my 
countrymen ! 

Perhaps, too, this calamity was needful to prepare the 
people for the stern work we have yet to do. It would 
seem that we ought to have learned the real temper of 
the rebellion before now. It has instigated the most 
fiendish riot known in human history — has practiced cru- 



326 * DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

elties upon our kindred, taken in battle, in comparison 
with which the deeds of the old Spanish inquisition 
seem merciful — has conspired, in its hellish hate, to 
bury us in the ashes of our own dwellings — and still we 
were talking of a display of clemency and of magna- 
nimity towards a conquered foe. It was needful that the 
nation should be brought to a better mind ; for Congress, 
which has the (constitutional right to declare the punish- 
ment of treason, is but the servant of the people. The 
heathful laws already upon our statute books, which make 
death the traitor's reward, seemed harsh to many. Do 
they seem so now ? 

Treason has taken the life of our loved and honored 
President. It has entered the sick room of our Secretary 
of State, and indicted wounds which there is too much 
reason to fear will prove fatal ; and w r e must believe that, 
horrid as all this is, it is only part of a vast and skillfully 
planned conspiracy to overthrow the entire executive 
power of the government. Let us go now together and 
gaze upon the form of our honored dead. Around him 
are the folds of the nag in whose defence myriads have 
fallen. Not one of all the host of heroes loved the dear 
" stars and stripes " with a truer love than that which 
inspired the breast of our Chief Commander. Treason 
had not done its worst until it laid him low. The fiendish 
deed is done ! Shall we turn now and open the arms of 
brotherly tenderness to monsters of iniquity who would 
count it all joy to trample his lifeless remains beneath 
their feet % They mock us who ask it ! Shall traitors be 
welcomed to our fellowship ? Shall we longer hug a sen- 
timental theory of clemency ? No ! a thousand times no ! 
We will not be vindictive, nor revengeful, but, God help- 
ing us, we will be just. 

Our duty is stern and painful, but we must not shrink 



HUNT. 3 W 27 

from its performance. Our voices may be feeble, bnt we 
will raise them for justice, and do all that in us lies to 
sustain our newly-inaugurated President in the faithful 
execution of the laws. At least we will demand that the 
leaders of this rebellion shall suffer the extreme penalty 
of the law in death. This is duty. We owe it to our- 
selves, to coming generations, and to God. 

Let us go now to our homes, akd to our closets. Now, 
if ever, we need to pnr\ These are " times that try men's 
souls." Are we true men ? Do we love our country ? 
Do we love humanity? Do we love Jesus? This last 
question was proposed, not long ago, to our departed Presi- 
dent. He replied with tears, " When I left my home in 
Springfield to come to Washington, though I felt my re- 
sponsibility and asked my neighbors to pray for me, I was 
not a Christian. When my dear boy, Willie, was taken 
from me, I ^till was not a Christian, but when I stood on 
the field of Gettysburg and looked upon the graves of its 
heroes, I gave myself to God, and now I can say that I do 
love Jesus." 

Great Emancipator ! The whole earth is filled with thy 
fame, and millions will mourn at thy tomb, yet thou art 
our brother in the fellowship of Jesus 1 

In Jesus sleep ! 



SERMON XIX. 



REV. WILLIAM ADAMS, D. D. 



Few are the words which are needed to-day. God has 
spoken, and we are dumb. These funereal emblems — this 
sombre, melancholy black — these pale faces of anxious, 
sorrowful men ; this leaden weight at our hearts, an- 
nounce the terrible affliction which has befallen the na- 
tion in the sudden and violent death of its honored Presi- 
dent. 

I had expected to address you this morning, in a joyous 
strain, on the most joyous event in the history of our 
world. I had prepared a discourse on the resurrection of 
our Lord, and the rising of individuals and nations in 
him to a new life. But the circumstances in which we 
are assembled are so appalling that all ordinary topics 
are for the moment entirely superseded. When God 
speaks out of the whirlwind it would betray profane in- 
sensibility not to pause and consider. J^ever, I will not 
say in our history, but in the history of the world, was 
there such a conjunction of events as that which, in an in- 
stant, has thrown this nation from the heights of joy into 
profounclest mourning. This is not the hrst instance in 
which a public man has been assassinated to a nation's 

329 



330 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

dismay. "William the First, Prince of Orange, the founder 
of Dutch freedom, was shot, when fifty-two years old, in 
his own house by a young man, hired for the purpose by 
a Jesuit priest, with the promise of eternal salvation. The 
universal lamentation of Holland on that occasion is one 
of the great pictures of history. 

Henry the Fourth, of France, who, with all his faults 
and vascillations, was the best of all the French kings, in 
his fifty-seventh year, was stabbed in the streets of Paris 
when on his way to consummate alliances in favor of the 
Protestant interest against Spain and Austria. But these 
incidents furnish no parallel to the abrupt and terrible 
calamity which we deplore. Forty-eight hours ago we 
were in the highest exultation. Everything justified na- 
tional joy. This Easter would have been celebrated as 
never before, amid spring blossoms and flowers, and doxol- 
ogies, and anthems, and high throbbing hearts. The air was 
fanned with jubilant flags as the winter had passed and 
the time for the singing of birds was nigh. We were 
looking for the speedy termination of the war and the re- 
turn of peace, when the plough would skip along the 
mellow furrow, commerce flap her long-folded wings, and 
the land would laugh with industry, plenty, and pros- 
perity. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, we are 
brought down into the deepest affliction. A single night 
has wrought the greatest of changes. It was " a night 
long to be remembered." We have not yet rallied from 
the shock sufficiently to command thought or language. 
Our children and our children's children will speak of it, 
and read of it, as one of profound horror. The Chief 
Magistrate of the nation has fallen by the hand of an as- 
sassin. To lend all possible aggravations to the tragic 
event, an accomplice, simultaneously, with more than 
brutal, fiendish violence, invaded the chamber of the 



ADAMS. 331 

Secretary of State, where domestic love was tenderly 
watching him, disabled and shattered by an accident, and 
endeavored to butcher him in his bed ! 

It is, indeed, a time for lamentation and mourning. It is 
not to be wondered at that strong men auiong us, as they 
met each other yesterday, grasped hands in silence and 
sobbed. So to feel and act was manly. All political 
partialities, all differences of opinion in regard to modes 
and measures, are merged, ocean-deep, in the astonish- 
ment and grief which this event has produced. We cannot 
believe that throughout all the loyal States there was a 
single man or woman who heard of this tragedy without 
a shudder of horror. Consider the circumstances. As- 
sassination even of a private citizen is frightful. To as- 
sault a man when unsuspecting, unarmed, defenceless, 
whatever motive may have prompted the crime, is cow- 
ardly and dastardly. But this was the head of the na- 
tion — the lawful, chosen President of the United States. 
This was a blow aimed at the very heart of the country. 
It was a blow which was intended to exterminate you and 
your children. It reminds us of the frenzied passion of 
Nero, who wished, on one occasion, that all Home had 
but one neck, that he mi«;ht sever it at one stroke. 

Consider the personal character of the man thus immo- 
lated. He was not a hard, rough-shod, truculent, stern, 
cruel man or magistrate. He bore no resemblance to 
Marat, gorged with blood, assassinated by Charlotte Cor- 
day. He was the mildest and most inoffensive of men. 
Called by Providence to solemn and painful duty, he 
was always inclined to leniency. He was most tender- 
hearted, as gentle, by nature, as a woman. I do not re- 
call a word of his which was intended to insult, goad, 
taunt, or exasperate any man; not one act which looked 
like unnecessary severity, bearing any resemblance to 



332 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

cruelty. Many acts of kindness and generosity are re- 
ported of him ; for he was benignant, honest, and thor- 
oughly conscientious. Such were the qualities which 
met in our President. God is making us to feel, and 
many are astonished to discover it, how much of real ten- 
derness is implied in that epithet. The Indian tribes in 
our territories call the President of the United States 
their " Great Father." It is a beautiful designation. 
Twice, during my professional life, have I officiated when 
death smote the President of the country, and distinctly 
do I recall, when Harrison and Taylor died, the depth of 
true and gentle affection which was developed out of 
that relation between the people and their chosen Presi- 
dent. In times of political asperity, of free debate, of 
earnest discussion, this is forgotten. God intends that we 
should not forget it always. It is right and proper that 
we should feel it and express it now. The head is smitten 
and the whole body shudders. The father of the country 
is slain, and a whole nation are the mourners. There are 
many whom the world could easily spare. Some in con- 
spicuous places, of whom to be rid would be a vast reliel. 
There are others who are so related to good and great 
causes that their fall convulses the civilized world. Such 
was our President at the hour of his death. There is 
mourning to-day away on the shores of the Pacific. 
Something more than a profound sensation will be pro- 
duced on the other continent. I know of more than one 
praying circle in the heart of Switzerland and Germany, 
whore intercessions for a long time have been offered for 
the President of the United States. The event will be 
felt, for various reasons, throughout all Christendom. 
One thing is certain. They who plotted his death, and 
all who in any way sympathize with them may know it 
— his immortality is sure beyond all tarnish or eclipse. 



ADAMS. 333 

His name will live forevermore. By this very event he 
is secure of his place in the hearts of his countrymen, en- 
shrined and honored, whatever becomes of the name of 
every other President since that illustrious man, who was 
the first and greatest of all. When faithfulness is crowned 
with martyrdom, there is no waning to renown, and obliv- 
ion never can reach his pure and exalted fame. 

" Follow now as ye list ! The first mourner to-day 
Is the nation whose father is taken away. 
Wife, children and neighbor may moan at his knell ; 
He was lover and friend of his country as well. 
For the stars on our banner grown suddenly dim, 
Let us weep, in our darkness, but weep not for him : 
Not for him, who departing leaves millions in tears, 
Not for him who has died full of honors and years ! 
Not for him who ascended Fame's ladder so high ; 
From the round at the top he has stepped to the sky !" 

The wantonness of this atrocious act is another feature of 
the event. What does it accomplish ? What could they 
who instigated and perpetrated the deed expect to gain 
by it ? It cannot help the rebellion. It is certain to con- 
summate its overthrow. It cannot arrest or embarrass 
the lawful government of the country. That will stand. 
The Constitution provides for this very exigency, and when 
the bursts of tumultuous and vehement emotions which 
this calamity has occasioned have subsided into gentler re- 
flection, men everywhere will admire the sublime ease 
and smoothness with which the lawful successor of the 
murdered President was inaugurated into office, gov- 
ernment not intermitted, nor even in the imagination of a 
single citizen imperilled for a moment. Never did our 
government stand so firm, so strong, as at this very 
hour, notwithstanding the tremendous blow by which it 
has been struck. Millions of people, to-day, amid their 



334 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

mourning and prayers at the altars of religion, have 
sworn, in their hearts, before Him who sitteth on the 
throne, that in dependence on Him this government shall 
be preserved and upheld forever. 

The origin of this deplorable deed is no secret. It was 
not a sudden burst of passion. It was a cool, deliberate, 
long-intended plot. It is a part and a most fitting climax 
of a most atrocious attempt on the life of the country. 
When it was announced that there was a conspiracy to 
assassinate Mr. Lincoln as the President elect before his 
inauguration, it was hooted at by many as a most ludi- 
crous imagination. The event has proved that these fears 
were not groundless. It shows the intensity of that hate 
which has been cherished by the leaders of the rebellion, 
just as the crucifixion of our Lord was no sudden act of 
frenzy, but the culmination of a long, deep and bitter ha- 
tred. Believing that this rebellion was conceived in sin 
and brought forth in iniquity, a distinction should be 
made between those who instigated it and the multitudes 
who have been involved in it — some innocently, against 
their emphatic protests, and others, in vast numbers, 
through misjudgment and falsities. It was a part of the 
policy of the original conspirators to fabricate and circu- 
late falsehoods in regard to the intentions of the govern- 
ment, by which multitudes were misled and inflamed. No 
opportunity was given for the correction of these falsities 
before the torch was actually applied and the fire was rag- 
ing. Editors of those newspapers, through which this 
mischief was propagated, have a tremendous load upon 
their consciences when arraigned before an enlightened pub- 
lic sentiment, and at the bar of God. It would be a sin 
against all truth and honor not to make the distinctions 
and exceptions to which allusion has been made. Multi- 
tudes of men and women dragged into this rebellion — 



ADAMS. 335 

good Christian people — will shudder at this enormous 
crime, even as we do. But no such kindly judgment will 
exempt the leaders of this vast and wicked sedition. 
They knew that this rebellion was without good and ade- 
quate cause, and therefore, before God and man, unjusti- 
fiable. It had no origin or necessity but passionate will 
and pride, on the part of men foiled by the solemn march 
of the census in the purpose of extending and perpetuating 
slavery. When you have given credit for all the human- 
ity and piety of those who, by the circumstances of their 
birth and education, were complicated with a system of 
slavery which they did not originate ; after making all 
the qualifications and exceptions which charity and justice 
require, the truth will come forth now like the sound of 
many waters, that slavery is barbarism ; that its effects on 
character must be bad ; that those who constantly inhale 
its mephitic gases must be insensibly poisoned thereby ; 
that cruelty to prisoners to the point of starvation, the 
attempt to burn cities, and throw from the track by night 
rail-cars freighted with women and children, are a legiti- 
mate part of its progeny ; and if anything was wanting 
to complete the measure of detestation which belongs to 
this great crime of rebellion against a government which 
never was otherwise than lenient and benignant, it was 
just this wanton, unprovoked, and horrible assassination 
of the President. It would seem that all Christian na- 
tions must turn now with ineifable loathing and disgust 
from a rebellion which, inspired and fostered in the inter- 
est of slavery, could prompt to such an enormity of crime. 
Palsied be my tongue before it utters one syllable in 
the spirit of revenge. We are the disciples of that Sa- 
viour, who, upon the cross, prayed for his own enemies. 
While I have not a word to utter in the way of exciting 
vindictiveness, but many in the way of interdicting and 



336 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

denouncing it, much have we all to learn in regard to 
the tremendous necessities of justice and the solemnities 
of constitutional law. There has been growing up, for 
the last twenty years, throughout this country, the off- 
spring of a certain kind of humanitarianism, called re- 
ligion, supplanting the old sturdy theology of the Bible, 
— loose notions concerning the processes of justice, in the 
form of opposition to capital punishment. At this hour, 
in one of the jails of Massachusetts, is a man who, some 
two years ago, murdered a defenceless clerk in a bank at 
Maiden, — as unprovoked and horrible an instance of 
crime as ever was perpetrated. He was arraigned, tried, 
convicted, and sentenced to death. But that sentence 
has never been executed. Certain men, known as philan- 
thropists, of a notorious class, have declared against the 
cruelty and barbarism of capital punishment. The Gov- 
ernor of Massachusetts — all honor to his vigor and prompt- 
ness in upholding the arm of the national magistracy 
throughout the war — not concealing his personal and 
theological notions in regard to the extreme penalty of 
the law, has persistently refused to sign the warrant for 
execution, and so the culprit is likely to escape the gal- 
lows. There is too much of this mawkish sentimental ism 
abroad ; this milky, rose-water religion, which, beginning 
with a denial of future punishment, and arguing for uni- 
versal salvation against the explicit assertion of the Scrip- 
tures, which declare that God will turn the wicked into 
hell, if they repent not, would dispense with all the 
severities of justice, and resolve all government, human 
and Divine, into an aromatic essence. 

One such act as that which now conv ulses the country was 
perhaps needful to correct all these meretricious notions. 
There is a tender mercy which is cruelty. If any one has. 
ever staggered and been confounded as to the meaning ot 



ADAMS. 337 

the imprecatory psalms, lie has the interpretation now in 
his own bosom. Pie hits the truth by an intuition. With 
not a particle of vindictiveness, not one thought or feeling 
foreign to the spirit of Christ, who does not wish that the 
perpetrators of this crime may be brought to condign 
punishment ? What David, a man after God's own heart, 
felt and wrote in regard to Doeg and Ahithophel, we feel, 
and ought to feel, in regard to all who aim their blows 
against the life of society. What would become of us, if 
we are to tolerate crime, and be lenient towards atrocious 
offenders ? If passion is to usurp supremacy, and men are 
to murder governments and murder citizens at their will, 
and be unmolested and unpunished, the sooner we find an 
asylum for ourselves beyond the reach of such barbaric 
philanthropy, the better for ourselves. The eyes of the 
world are upon us now to see whether by liberty we mean 
license and lawlessness, — whether democracy is synony- 
mous with a mob. Let us so conduct ourselves as to 
create the impression that no people revere laws — I mean 
laws distinctively so called, with penalties and armed mag- 
istracy to execute them — more cordially than the citizens 
of these United States, thus proving ourselves the friends 
of humanity and true liberty. 

In regard to the honored person himself who has fallen, 
he has completed his task. Who has made more out of life 
than he ? Till thirty years of age he was addicted to 
manual labor. A, model of republican simplicity, he was 
raised, by the suffrages of his fellow-citizens, to the high- 
est office in the land. He asked the prayers of the coun- 
try when entering upon that office. He shrank from ex- 
treme measures at the beginning, but when duty demand- 
ed he announced, in his first proclamation, his purpose, 
in the name of the American nation, to raise the coun- 
try's flag' where it belonged on all the forts which had 

15 



338 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

been wrested by fraud and violence from the national 
control. He lived to see that purpose accomplished. On 
Friday last the symbol of our nationality was raised over 
the fortress which was first assaulted by rebellion. On 
the same day — his work complete — he fell, and at this 
hour that ensign hangs at half-mast all over the land, in 
token of universal mourning. Illustrious citizen, long 
will it be ere thy name and thy death will be mentioned 
without tears. 

What are the intentions of Divine Providence in the 
permission of such an event it would be presumption in 
any man to affirm. Frequently have we been reminded 
of the ease with which the Almighty makes the wrath 
of man to praise him, and we are confident that this sad 
occurrence will be overruled for the unifying of the whole 
country, and in many ways, which we will not predict, for 
promoting our ultimate advantage. Mr. Lincoln seems to 
have been impressed with the conviction that he was a 
child and servant of Providence, whose direction he ap- 
pears to have implored. I have just received, from a 
friend, the following copy of a letter written by the Pres- 
ident to a person who had been greatly moved to guide 
his mind into the channels of religious faith : 

Executive Mansion, j 
Eliza P. Gtjrney: Washington, Sept. 4th, 1864. J 

My esteemed Friend — I have not forgotten, probably never shall 
forget, the very impressive occasion when yourself and friends vis- 
ited me on a Sabbath forenoon, two years ago ; nor has your kind 
letter, written nearly a year later, ever been forgotten. 

In all it has been your purpose to strengthen my reliance upon 
God. I am much indebted to the Christian people of the country 
for their Christian prayers and consolations ; and to no one of them 
more than to yourself. The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, 
and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to perceive them 
in advance. 



ADAMS. 339 

We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war Ions before 
this, but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise. We shall yet 
acknowledge his wisdom and our own errors therein. Meanwhile, we 
must work earnestly in the best light he gives, trusting that so work- 
ing still induces to the great end he ordains. Surely he intends some 
great good to follow this mighty convulsion, which no mortal could 
make and no mortal could stay. 

Your people, the Friends, have had, and are having, very great 
trials in principles and faith ; opposed to both war and oppression, 
they can only practically oppose oppression by war. In this hard di- 
lemma some have chosen one horn and some the other. For those 
appealing to me, on conscientious grounds, I have done, and shall 
do, the best I could and can in my own conscience and my oath to the 
law. That you believe this I doubt not, and, believing it, I shall still 
receive for our country and myself your earnest prayers to our Father 

in heaven. 

Your sincere friend, 
(Signed) A. Lincoln. 

Most appropriate are these words to the event of his 
own death. We find the consolation we need in the be- 
lief of an over-ruling Providence, who directs all things, 
great and small, with reference to his own ultimate pur- 
poses : — ■ 

Peace — be still! 
In this night of sorrow bow, 
O ! my heart contend not thou, 
What befalls thee is God's will : 

Peace — be still! 

Peace — bo still! 
All thy mourning words aro vain — 
God will make the riddle plain — 
Wait his word and hear his will : 

Peace — tie still ! 

Hold thee still! 
Though the Father scourge thec sore, 
Cling thee to him all the more, 
Let him mercy's work fulfill : 

Hold thee still! 



340 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

Hold thee still ! 
Though the Good Physician's knife 
Seem to touch thy very life ; 
Death alone he means to kill : 

Hold thee still ! 

Lord, my God, 
Give me grace, that I may "bo 
Thy true child, and silently 
Own thy sceptre and thy rod, 

Lord, my God ! 

Shepherd mine, 
From thy fulness give me still 
Faith to do and bear thy will, 
Till the morning light shall shine, 

Shepherd mine. 

This is the substance of our counsel to-day. Be still, and 
know that this is God ! When opportunity for reflection 
shall come, I may address you with more specific instruc- 
tion. Amid the tumultuous emotions of this morning my 
compendious advice is, be calm, be prayerful, be firm in your 
faith in God. Pray for your country, and pray especially 
for him who is thus suddenly called to be the President of 
the Republic. • Let us bury the dead with all honor and 
grief, and turn to the living with sympathy, with confi- 
dence, and with hope. Presidents die, the country lives. 
Agents disappear, but the kingdom of God advances. 

IIow worthless, how transient is every thing here on 
earth, save as it is related to that kingdom of our Lord 
which never shall be moved. Death, how mysterious ! 
To-day, a man so great, so powerful in command of ar- 
mies and navies — to-morrow, nothing but ashes ! He 
that would be immortal, in the true sense, must identify 
himself with that kingdom of Christ which gives to time 
all its importance, and to eternity all its glory. 



SERMON XX. 



REV. HENRY J. FOX. 



" Death is come up into our windows and entered into our palaces." — 
Jeremiah ix. 21. 

" Is he slain according to the slaughter of them that were slain by him ?" 
— Isaiah xxvii. 7. 

" If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small." — Prov- 
erbs xxiv. 10. 

"Vengeance belongeth unto me ; I will recompense, saith the Lord." — 
Hebrews x. 30. 

The great and slowly revolving wheel of history, has 
again dipped itself in blood. Never, in the annals of na- 
tions was a people plunged into greater affliction, than 
have been the people of this great country since the morn- 
ing of Saturday last. 

The spectacle which this nation presents to-day is one of 
the most imposing and solemn that ever men or gods have 
looked down upon. If the spirits of the departed can 
stoop from their lofty abode and behold the dwellers upon 
earth — if they are permitted to become cognizant of what 
is transpiring among men, then does the spirit of Abraham 
Lincoln realize, to-day as never ruler of men lias realized 
before, how deep — how wide-spread — can be the affection 



342 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

and grief of a people for a man exalted by the providence 
of God, to stretch out over them a governing and protect- 
ing hand. 

A little over four years ago Abraham Lincoln left his 
western home. As he left it, he said to his friends and 
neighbors, " My friends, no one not in my position can 
appreciate the sadness I feel at this parting. To this peo- 
ple I owe all that I am. Here I have lived more than 
one-quarter of a century. Here my children were born, 
and here one of them lies buried. I know not how soon 
I shall see you again." These words in their very sadness 
seem to me to have been a prophecy. 

You will remember, that in that brief, touching, parting 
address, he also spoke of the duty he would be called to 
perform, as " one greater than any that had fallen to the 
lot of any man, since the days of Washington " — of Wash- 
ington as only succeeding because aided by Divine Prov- 
idence ; and, said he, " on the same Almighty Being I 
place my reliance, and I hope you my friends will pray 
that I may receive that Divine assistance without which I 
cannot succeed, but with which success is certain." 

It has been said by one of our public journalists, that 
our city is like " a vast burial ground whose monuments 
are hung with the symbols of woe," and as it is with this 
city, so it is with every city and village and. hamlet in the 
land. "It is as if a pall overhung the land, and in the 
shadow of it dwelt a chilled and awe-struck people." We 
may, indeed, say with the prophet, " death is come up into 
our windows and entered into our palaces." Never, in the 
history of the world was there, I apprehend, so spontaneous 
and so general an exhibition of the sigas of mourning. And 
it is not the mansions of the rich merely that put on sad 
drapery, the poor out of their scanty means have vied with 
their wealthier neighbors in displaying the emblems of 



fox. 343 

grief. Whilst the millionaire has spent his hundreds on 
funereal upholstery, the poor mother, made a widow by 
the war, has spent her last dollar in humble insignia of 
woe; and even the maimed drummer-boy with but a few 
cents in his pocket has denied himself their use, that his 
armless sleeve might have its narrow band of crape. 

It is solemn and appalling to be in the presence of death 
in any form. We are affected and moved by it. But 
when it smites down, as in this case it has, one around 
whom all the affections of a great people were closely and 
indissolubly entwining themselves, then new and pro- 
founder elements enter into and are mixed with, the cup 
of our sorrow. 

As a nation we liave been called to follow other Presi- 
dents to an untimely grave. Harrison and Taylor both died 
during their term of office. But in these instances death 
w.as ushered, if not invited, in, by disease and overwork. 

Abraham Lincoln fell after a long and dreadful storm, 
just as the rainbow was spanning the clearing sky, just as 
he was about to open, in the name of the nation, the bright 
gates of the temple of peace, just when passion was 
cpienching her fires, and the spear and the bow were being 
broken asunder, — just then was he struck down by the 
hand of the assassin. For the first time in the history of 
our hitherto happy land, so far as the government is con- 
cerned, the hand of the assassin has been stretched out to 
the completion of a most bloody work. Hamilton, it is 
true, fell in a duel, and there have been others high in au- 
thority who have engaged in bloody personal frays, but 
never before have we had a chief magistrate or any gov- 
ernment official foully and basely murdered. 

With regard to the assassin, there is no ingenuity by 
which he can escape his doom. lie may be hidden fur a 
while; he may wander like a wild beast through the tan- 



344: DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

gled briars of impassible swamps, but go where lie may, 
the wide world will be to him a vast prison-house. Un- 
tamed brutes, hungry though they may be for blood, will 
slink away abashed at his approach. Men will hunt him 
as they would a tiger that had robbed them of their sons. 
He will be branded by rulers and people everywhere as a 
second Cain, and as the enemy of his race. Even the 
cannibal king of Dahomey would surrender him to the 
merited vengeance which he has invoked. If he could 
even evade, for a time, the avenging hands of his fellow- 
men, he cannot escape from himself. 

If ever remorse scourged, as with scorpion thongs, any 
soul of man, surely his soul will receive its severest seath- 
ings. Even Nero, we are told, started at the unearthly 
trumpet which sounded nightly over the grave of his mur- 
dered mother. Even Charles IX. saw bloody streaks in the 
sky, and heard strange noises in the leads of the Louvre ; 
will not he, then, on whose hands the stain of Lincoln's 
blood is not yet washed away, hear unearthly sounds and 
see unearthly sights ? Yes ; and he will utter at midnight, 
in the wild, weird darkness of the desolate spot in which 
he shall attempt to hide himself, and in which insulted 
and outraged nature may allow him to linger for an hour, 
the soliloquy now far more appropriately his own, than it 
ever was that of the king whom he perhaps so often pro- 
fessionally personified. 

" My conscience hath, a thousand, several tongues, 
And every tongue "brings in a several tale, 
And every tale condemns me for a villain. 

" Perjury ! Perjury ! in the highest degree, 
Murder ! Stern murder ! in the direst degree, 
And several sins all used in each degree, 
Throng to the bar crying all, Guilty ! Guilty 
I shall despair, there is no creature loves me, 
And if I die no soul will pity me." 



fox. 345 

If I could have the ears of those who instigated, or who, 
if they did not instigate this cruel murder, participated 
in its criminality by rejoicing over it, I would remind 
them that all political assassinations have resulted in the 
defeat and overthrow of the parties and principles for the 
furtherance of which the guilt of their consummation was 
assumed. I would tell them that it was most univisdy 
done ; that it was a blunder as well as a crime. Up to 
last Friday evening, there was a breakwater between the 
long-accumulating wrath of the North and the leaders of 
rebellion at the South. But those few grains of powder 
with which the murderer's pistol was charged have done 
more in a single moment than a hundred mines, although 
they had been as deep and wide as that of Petersburg, 
could have done to break down and to destroy the only 
barrier between them and the vengeance of an incensed 
and outraged people. 

They have struck down the hand that was lifted oftener 
and more lovingly than that of any other man, to shield, 
protect and befriend them. They have stiffened in death 
the fingers that were impatiently waiting to write such an 
amnesty as was never granted to rebels before. They 
have silenced the voice which would have proclaimed 
their pardon in stronger, sweeter strains than ever fell 
under like provocations from human lips. 

This assassination is but the full ripe fruit of that cruel 
and hellish spirit of slavery, which years ago would 
have assassinated Sumner in the Senate, and which im- 
prisoned and tortured, wherever it has had the power, all 
who have dared to sympathize with the slave. 

The event, in its sadness, appals us. We are stunned. 
We are as men bewildered, and in part bereft of rea- 
son. That we can talk to you at all is a miracle; if we talk 
in a way that may need revision, the circumstances are our 
ample excuse. 



DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 



I cannot clivest myself of the conviction that this was 
a 'premeditated event. The facts, as they develope them- 
selves, will show, I think, that it was the culmination of 
a deep, a wide-spread, a long-maturing conspiracy, which 
contemplated not the death of Lincoln alone, but of Sew- 
ard, of Johnson, Stanton, Grant and others. 

That the wicked leaders of this rebellion are capable 
of such a crime against the nation and against God, as 
such a conspiracy involves, it seems to me needs no proof. 
The men who could deliberately fire upon the nation's 
flag as it floated over Sumter, when they knew that that 
first shot would involve the death of countless thousands ; 
who could, with wicked and deliberate intent, starve the 
thousands of prisoners, who, by the misfortunes of war, 
were so unhappy as to fall into their hands ; who were ca- 
pable of plotting the destruction of this city, with its 
helpless women and children, by a sudden midnight con- 
flagration, and who have been overtaken and detected in 
other infamies, were capable of planning and taking the 
necessary means to execute this crime, than which his- 
tory does not present another so truly appalling. 

My thoughts revert, as I am sure yours must, to the 
week immediately preceding the first inauguration of Mr. 
Lincoln. We heard of a plot for destroying him as he 
passed through a Southern city. We were too much 
blinded then to believe it, now we know it to have been 
true. Through the acumen and vigilance of the heads 
of the police department of our own city that conspiracy 
was discovered, and the conspirators baffled. At last, how- 
ever, their secret machinations have succeeded, and lo ! a 
nation prostrate in sorrow before its God. 

It is not for us to say why the Almighty has permitted 
so great a calamity to befall us. I confess, that in this, his 
ways are not only inscrutible, but unless we specially 



fox. 347 

guard ourselves, they may be the occasion of infidel and 
despairing doubts. 

Future events in the history of the nation, as they 
shall slowly or rapidly develope themselves, will doubt- 
less show us that after all it was best for the great body 
of the people. Until then we must say, 

" God moves in a mysterious way, 
His wonders to perform." 

I think it may be said, our enemies being the judges, that 
this blow was without the shadow of an excuse. There 
have been men in power, men at the head of our armies, on 
whom, justly or unjustly, the stigma of cruelty has fallen ; 
but who ever in the hour of the wildest excitement ventur- 
ed to hint that Lincoln was cruel ? Never was there a more 
tender-hearted man. If a sentry was detected sleeping at 
his post he was never arrested until a pardon interposed be- 
tween him and a disgraceful death. I venture to say that 
Abraham Lincoln has pardoned more men deserving 
death, than any man ever entrusted with executive power. 
To talk of him as being a tyrant is grovelling folly. 
Wherever he has erred it has been on the side of mercy. 
His leniency has ever exposed him to abuse, and, if I 
mistake not, a strong party was growing up in our very 
midst, based upon the theory that our Chief Magistrate 
dealt with offenders with too gentle a hand. And there are 
those, who listen to me to-day, who think that Provi- 
dence has permitted this calamity to befall us that a 
sterner hand might rule in our national affairs. 

The second passage I have quoted from the word of 
God, as applicable to this sad occasion, is from Isaiah. 
The prophet asks concerning the Son of God, or of some 
of the ancient kings, what we may ask as we look upon 
the fallen form of him, who was, but as yesterday, the 



348 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

pride and hope of the nation : " Is he slain according to 
the slaughter of those that were slain by him." We answer 
no ! Those who have been slain because he would not con- 
sent to let the nation die, have been slain in honorable war- 
fare, upon an open and fair field, with an opportunity to 
protect and defend themselves, or, by a timely withdrawal 
from the wicked strife, escape the impending blow. But 
he was smitten when disarmed ; struck down when and 
where he could not shield himself, in the night, from be- 
hind his back, 'in the presence of a shrieking, fainting 
wife. He met death not struggling with a noble, manly 
foe ; it was the misfortune of his terror-stricken friends 
to see him slaughtered by a cowardly, and, for ought I 
know, hired assassin. 

Mr. Lincoln will be spoken of to-day and for genera- 
tions to come, on every anniversary of this day, as a great 
and noble man. I say a great man. At first, and for 
some time, the small wits of Europe, and their despicable 
imitators here, dared to speak and write of him as an illit- 
erate and boorish man, of but small parts. All that has 
been changed. The most appreciative, not to say laucli- 
tory, things that I have ever read respecting Mr. Lincoln 
have been from British pens. British journalists now 
confess that his state papers (more remarkably his own 
than were those of any chief magistrate that ever pre- 
ceded him) are marvels of strength and logical power. 

Mr. Lincoln was the incarnation of solid common sense. 
He was slow, it may be, to decide on great matters, but 
when he did decide, he decided wisely, he decided for 
himself, and he decided for ever, and it may be said of 
him, as it cannot be said of many, he never failed the 
country in an emergency. Never was there ever a more 
modest man. His modesty was the modesty of genius. 
He rarely ever thought of his own personal interests, and 



fox. 349 

therefore scarcely ever spoke of himself. It was his coun- 
try and the people that were in all his thoughts ; if their 
interests were promoted, his own were either secondary or 
ignored altogether. We naturally, in an hour like this, 
think of the great men that went before ; we think of 
Washington, and we remember that he was pure, so pure 
that we call our children by his name, so in ages to come, 
our children will be glad to remember that on Lincoln's 
escutcheon no cloud of impurity has ever cast a dimming 
shade. We remember Jackson, and proudly say that he 
was firm ; so of Lincoln, it may be said, that with greater 
gentleness he was never moved in the great grand outlines 
of his policy the breadth of a hair. We remember Jeifer- 
son and Hamilton, and talk of their astuteness, but it shall 
be said of Lincoln that he was more astute than they, be- 
cause he made Providence his guide. 

Standing, as I do, in the house of God, and as a minis- 
ter of God, it is particularly fitting that I say a word or 
two with regard to his moral and religious character. 
Much has been said by some, whom I will not trust myself 
to characterize, of his having been in a theatre that fatal 
night. I frankly confess that I would rather the hand of 
the assassin had smitten him on the steps of the Capitol, 
or while he had been seated in the executive chair. I do 
not, however, consider the unfortunate fact of his being 
in a theatre as having in it much moral or religious signifi- 
cance ; certainly not as much as some would suppose it 
has. His visit was for political rather than for personal 
reasons. He was the President of all the people; he had 
to gratify, especially in a time of great public anxiety, the 
demand of his constituency to sec and honor him. He 
only did what Washington and the other Presidents be- 
fore him had done. There has been but one of our Presi- 
dents who did not frequent places of public amusement, 



350 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

and even the enemies of our departed Chief Magistrate 
will not injure his memory by assuming that in real 
morality and in an honest respect for the things of God, he 
could suffer by comparison with him. It is to the credit 
of Mr. Lincoln that he was for years a most successful ad- 
vocate of the temperance reform. I have been informed, 
by a bishop of our own Church, that one of our most distin- 
guished ministers and scholars, one whom the whole 
Church now delights to honor, was once a school-teacher at 
the West, and that when in this position the use of intoxicat- 
ing liquors was becoming a snare to him and threatening 
him with ruin. Just at this juncture an application was 
made by a distinguished gentleman, for the use of his 
school-house that a temperance meeting might be held in 
it. It was granted. The time for the meeting earne. 
The first address was delivered by a man of some reputa- 
tion as a speaker. It was made with great dignity, but it 
was powerless, and accomplished nothing. Then there 
arose an awkward young man, who talked on in a plain, 
straight-forward manner, interspersing his remarks with 
numerous stories and apt illustrations. When this young 
man had got the audience to the highest pitch of excite- 
ment, he drew out of his pocket a pledge and a pen with 
which to sign it. The young schoolmaster was the first to 
do it, and thus threw around himself a bulwark of pro- 
tection. I need hardly tell you that this temperance lec- 
turer was Abraham Lincoln. He was the enemy not only 
of intemperance, but of vice in every form.' Never, to 
my knowledge, has pen or tongue dared to charge him 
with the slightest immorality. He was virtuous ; that 
much, at least, we think all must allow. With regard to 
religion, I do not dare to say that our deceased President 
has been known for any length of time as a pious man. 
It can be said of him, however, that he never outraged 



fox. 351 

the religious convictions of Christian people, as did Jef- 
ferson and others of his school. There has always been a 
marked and a growing recognition of God and of Divine 
Providence in his speeches, letters, and state papers. I 
believe, from evidence which I cannot doubt, that he had 
been for some time prior to his death a lover of prayer ; 
that since the consecration of the cemetery, in which are 
to slumber the bones of the heroes who fell at Gettys- 
burg, there is reason for believing that he knew the com- 
forts of a personal trust in Christ. His religion was not 
of the demonstrative, certainly not of the puritanical 
type ; nevertheless, I think it was healthy and exhibited 
the signs of a gradual growth. 

I think he was not unprepared for this event, as its sud- 
denness would seem to suggest might have been the case. 
With great men, presentiments of death are so common, 
that they would seem to follow a natural law. Mr. Lin- 
coln was not an exception to the general rule. We have 
all heard of the poem which he repeated line by line, to 
Mr. Carpenter. How striking the last stanza : — 

" 'Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a "breath, 
From the "blossom of health, to the paleness of death, 
From the gilded saloon, to the "bier and the shroud — 
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" 

Whether there was any significance in his affection for 
these lines, or it was only a simple coincidence ; whether 
they reflected his forecastings, or whether they did not; 
whether he was prepared or unprepared, he is gone, and 
God will be his judge, and, I doubt not, his " exceeding 
great reward." 

We are left ! Left overwhelmed in grief ! The effect 
of this national calamity should be a more unwavering 
dependence upon and trust in God. God rules the nations 
and not men. Presidents and kings are but his vicegerents 



352 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

on the earth. When lie has served his purpose with any 
great man he suffers him to pass away. He doubtless 
saw that it was best that Abraham Lincoln should be ta- 
ken from us ; that he thould be taken from us at the time 
and in the very manner in which he was taken. The 
great work of national regeneration which God began on 
this continent by him will not be stayed by his death. It 
will go on. God will lay his hand upon other men and put his 
Spirit in their hearts, and all the people shall yet praise him* 

The effect which this calamity will have tqjon the 
South is a subject concerning which I need not speak to 
you at length. You understand it without a word from 
me. That it will insure the punishment of the guilty, 
and in the end more thoroughly purify the States now in 
rebellion, I think but few can doubt. We need, Kowever, 
perhaps, to remind ourselves of what Paul said to the 
Hebrews : " Vengeance belono;eth unto me, and I will 
recompense, saith the Lord." It is our prerogative to 
punish; to visit upon the head of every criminal the 
justly merited penalty denounced against his offence. 
Not to do this is a weakness and a sin against society and 
against God. But to take vengeance ; to indulge in a 
spirit of revenge to visit upon the innocent it may be as 
well as upon the guilty, the consequences of this great 
wrong doing, is not Christian, it is not politic. This 
Avill be the great task of the hour, to hold ourselves in 
as with bit and bridle lest we seek in our vengeance to 
sweep the land as with the besom of destruction. 

How and by what processes this event will result in the 
more thorough regeneration of the South, it is the prov- 
ince of the politician to explain ; but of the fact I have 
no doubt. And such being the case, it will greatly miti- 
gate the sum of our misery and lighten the load we shall 
have to carry for years to come. 



fox. 353 

Nor need I speak to you, at any length, of the effect it 
will have at home. That you can picture to yourselves. 
It has already toned up thousands that were of doubtful, 
wavering loyalty, and it will tone up thousands of oth- 
ers. 

The occasion is one that demands vigilance. For aught 
I know that fearful pistol shot may have been the signal 
for a fresh onset at the South — for combinations and plots 
at the North. If not the signal, it may be made the oc- 
casion. To prevent it we must be constantly on our 
guard. If we never stood shoulder to shoulder before, 
let us do so now. If we have tolerated the utterance of 
treason and been silent when the enemies of the estab-» 
lishecl government have hissed their seditious hopes and 
threats in our ears, let us tolerate them no longer, but 
treat them, be they at home or abroad, as we should treat 
the enemies of liberty and of all human rights. 

This event will not, of course, be without its effects upo?i 
the negro. Its first effect, so far as they are personally 
concerned, will be extraordinary grief. As I met one 
yesterday — sad in countenance, looking at the emblems 
of woe that were all around him — I said to myself, what 
will be the effect upon his mind of the expressions of 
so general a grief? I thought he would come to the con- 
clusion, from what he saw, that there was not, after all, 
the barrier between him and others that he supposed 
there was — that there are times when all human beings, 
be they black or white, can have feelings in common. I 
could almost think I heard the poor negro saying : " If 
the white man, the rich white man — if the white men of 
every class and degree so loved my best friend, there may 
be — there will be -justice at last for me." 

This, our great bereavement, will have its effects upon 
all the nations of the earth. It will, doubtless, secure for 



354: DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

us, from foreign powers, a sympathy such as we never 
had. before. Even tyrants cannot favor assassination. 
They must frown upon it. They must sympathize with 
those who suffer in consequence of it, even though it be 
from no higher motive than an instinct of self-preservation. 
If assassins are to be let loose upon the world, they will rea- 
son, the foundations of society will be broken up, we are no 
longer safe, and there will be terror everywhere. The 
greatest and grandest result, so far as foreign nations are 
concerned, will be that it will demonstrate that we have 
power to govern ourselves. In any other land than ours, 
an event like this would be the signal for revolutions and 
•counter-revolutions; but with us, one President expires 
and. in less than six hours his successor is peacefully inau- 
gurated. The wheels of the government never stand 
still. There is no embarrassing interregnum ; no disputes 
about succession. We have not to satisfy ourselves with 
a boy for a ruler. The change is made without the shed- 
ding of a single drop of blood, or the intermission of a 
single duty. Foreign nations will understand, as they 
never understood before, the nature of the spirit which 
has moved and. controlled this rebellion. The demon is 
unveiled, before the eyes of the whole world, who will see 
it in a clearer, stronger light than ever — that slavery was, 
and is, a spirit of cruelty and murder. 

This is an occasion that calls for fortitude. We must 
meet it not with stoical indifference, that would be un- 
worthy of us ; but with a manly, resolute spirit that shall 
show to the world that we are equal to occasions of great 
sorrow, as well as to occasions of exceeding joy. It may 
be that Solomon only uttered a truism when he said, in 
the language of the third passage quoted at the beginning 
of this sermon, " If thou faint in the day of adversity 
thy strength is small, 1 ' yet the truism is one by which we 



fox. 355 

should be admonished to-day as we bow before our God. 
The nations are looking on. Let them not conclude from 
what they shall see of us in this fiery hour, that we have 
no strength, or that our strength is -but small. Let them 
learn that the principles upon which our government is 
founded are equal to the most terrible emergency, and 
that when our great men are smitten down we do not be- 
come imbecile or despairing, but that we take hold upon 
Omnipotence and receive our strength from God. Never 
let a nation, such as we are, with such a history ; never 
let such a people, with such a God, succumb to fear. As 
Sojourner Truth — the prophetess of her race — exclaimed 
in an hour of great discouragement and gloom, " God is 
not dead ;" no ! he still " rides upon the heavens in our 
help. God reigns, let the earth rejoice." 

If ever an occasion called for union and firmness, this 
is that occasion. Do we really estimate, as we ought, all 
that is at stake ? Our lives and property are imperilled. 
The future of our children is threatened. All our an- 
cient national landmarks may be swept away. An- 
archy and universal political and social chaos may be im- 
pending. If we make one false step, or even falter in the 
ri^ht way, we may be precipitated into the abyss. Let 
us, around God's altar to-day, enter into a covenant that 
in whatever else we may differ, we will not differ on the 
question of loyalty to the flag. Let us be true to that, and 
then — 

" When the hour seems dark with doom, 
Our sacred banner lifted higher, 
Shall flash away tho gathering gloom 
"With unextinguishablc fire." 

Let tjs go home to pray. Let us, in our closets and at our 
family altars, remeinbv v those who have been specially 



356 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

bereaved. There is a widow and two fatherless sons that 
demand our sympathy and our intercession before the 
throne of the heavenly grace. The Washington expe- 
rience of this now never-to-be-forgotten family has not 
been one of unalloyed enjoyment. During the President's 
first term, the angel of death entered the White House 
and bore away a beautiful and much loved boy, and to- 
day the bereaved mother and those affectionate brothers 
are drinking of a cup, the bitterness of which none can 
tell. 

Above all, let us pray for the land which our fathers 
and sons have died to save, that having had its very bosom 
sprinkled with the red gore drops, it become not drunken 
with blood. Let us pray God to save us from universal 
vengeance and death. Let us pray that the serpent of 
slavery, hacked and writhing with the wounds which this 
war has inflicted upon it, may never raise its hideous head 
from the ground, but that it may die the death which 
shall forever forbid its rising again. Let us pray that our 
land, nestling as under the wings of the Almighty, may 
again have rest and universal joyfulness. 

I told you once from this desk ; it was just after my visit 
to the bloody field of Gettysburg, that I had a dream 
that was not all a dream. It was a waking dream. I saw 
a tree riven from its topmost branches to its very roots ; 
around it were all the symbols of disunion and civil war. 
Now I see that riven tree restored, the wounds healing^ 
and hanging on its branches are all lovely flowers and 
precious fruits ; but at its spreading roots I see a tomb, 
and on it there is written in laurel leaves two names — 
names that are with us, as they will be with all other na- 
tions, household words. They are entwined forever: 
George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Let us now 
arise, fellow-citizens, and adorn that tomb with the palm 



fox. 357 

leaves, the chaplets and flower-wreaths of peace, for they 
lie all about ns. Let us drape it with scrolls on which 
admiring angels shall see mercy and forgiveness written 
in unfading letters of love. Then let us sing! yes, sing! 
sing in a low, soft, clear voice, as a fitting requiem for 
such an hour as this : " They rest from their labors and 
their works follow them. Peace on earth, good will to- 
ward men." 

" Hush that sohbing — weep more lightly, 
On we travel daily, nightly, 
To the rest that they have found. 
Are we not upon the river 
Sailing fast to meet forever 
On more holy, happy ground ?" 



SERMON XXI. 



KEY. HENKY B. SMITH, D. D. 



" I am the Lord, and there is none else ; there is no God heside me. I 
girded thee, though thou hast not known me." — Isaiah xlv. 5. 

We are apt to believe that man makes history. We 
look at the outside of events, and see not the secret 
springs that move and guide their progress. We judge 
them as they affect our transient feelings, interests, or 
plans. We measure them as they appear in time, and 
forget the past eternity in which they were all determined, 
and the future eternity in which they will all be inter- 
preted. 

But there is one who seeth the end from the bejnnnino;. 

There is a God who hideth himself, and only now and 

then revealeth himself. He alone fully knows what all 

things are and mean. He setteth up one, and putteth 

down another ; and none can stay his hand, or say unto 

him, What doest thou ? The lot is cast into the lap, but 

the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord. In his hand 

is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all 

mankind. At one time he setteth every man's sword 

against his fellow, even throughout all the host (Judges 

vii. 22) ; at another time he leads us to say, Thou Lord 

350 



360 DEATH OF PEESIDENT LINCOLN. 

wilt ordain peace for us; for thou also hast wrought all 
our works in us. So that in self-renunciation we are com- 
pelled to acknowledge, that now, O Lord, thou art our 
Father ; we are the clay, and thou our potter ; and we 
all are the work of thy hands. The king's heart is in the 
hand of the Lord ; as the rivers of water he turneth it 
withersoever he will. In our text he says of Cyrus, as 
may be said of all great rulers guided by his providence 
in ways they knew not : " I girded thee, though thou hast 
not known me ; that they may know from the rising of 
the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. 
I am the Lord, and there is none else." 

And there are times in every individual, and in every 
national history, when these majestic and awe-inspiring 
truths underlying all events and all religion, are brought 
so distinctly home to every mind and heart, that they could 
not be made more impressive if written in lines of light 
upon the canopy of heaven. There are times when we 
must flee to the refuge of God's providence, if we would 
avoid the blindness of chance, or the despair of fatalism ; 
for between these three, lawless chance, pitiless fate, or 
Divine providence, we must all at last choose in estimat- 
ing the events of time. In the great crises and junctures 
of history, in its staggering vicissitudes, when viewing 
the hecatombs sacrificed upon fields of carnage, when 
bowed down by the stroke of speechless private woe, or 
mute with horror before appalling crime committed 
against the embodied majesty of the State, at the mo- 
ment when a nation's destiny seems trembling in the 
balance — how deeply, how solemnly is the conviction 
forced upon us, that if there be any comfort, any refuge, 
it is only under the shadow of the Divine wings ; it is 
only in the belief, that He who ruleth in the heavens 
ruleth also upon the earth, and that the wrath of man 



SMITH. 3G1 

shall praise him. But as for yon, said Joseph to his 
brethren, ye thought evil against me ; but God meant it 
unto good, to bring to pass as it is this day, to save much 
people alive. 

And if ever a people were called upon, by an unparal- 
leled concurrence and combination of circumstances, to 
recognize the hand of God in history, the hand of him 
who both forms the light and creates darkness, who 
maketh peace and createth evil, it is surely this American 
people under the present conjuncture of events, some of 
which have so recently filled us with thankful exultation, 
while others have plunged us in the depths of national 
grief, mingled with awe, as if the very contradictions of 
destiny were at the same instant appointed to be our lot. 
An all-wise and inscrutable Providence has been guiding 
us in ways we knew not of; girding us for a work which 
no man could foresee, or which, if foreseen, no man would 
have dared to attempt ; enabling us, with faith and 
patience and sacrifice, to pass through all the vicissitudes 
of the greatest civil war in history, unexampled in its in- 
tensity, tenacity, resources, and cost both of treasures 
and men, until we had just come to see, as from the sum- 
mit of another Pisgah, the promised land stretched out, 
inviting us to enter in and make of it a goodly land in the 
name of the Lord of hosts. And then, just at the moment 
when all hearts were jubilant with the hope of a quick- 
coming peace ; when the great rebellion was staggering 
and crumbling down under the quick and sharp strokes by 
which alone it could be felled to the earth ; when the 
nation was awaiting its jubilee, and the very air was ring- 
ing with the glad acclaims of myriad voices of the free- 
men and the freed ; and when many, too, in the fulness 
of their too exuberant joy, had begun to forget justice to 
the wrong-doers, and were speaking of an almost total 
17 



302 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

amnesty and forgiveness ; then the providence of God 
stalled us as;ain with a lesson which can never be for- 
gotten, and, by the foulest crime of modern history, 
brought us once more face to face, in the most awful form 
imagination can conceive, with that gigantic sin which 
has brought all these woes upon us. As the great leader 
of the Israelites came only to the verge of the land of 
promise, and was not permitted to enter in, so the recog- 
nized and chosen leader of our republic was not allowed 
to share the full fruition of all he labored for with such 
sleepless watch and paternal care. An execrable assassin 
has sent him to his grave amid lamentation and wailing. 
A people stricken by the mighty hand of God, bowing 
low in the dust, can only say : I am dumb, I open not my 
mouth, because thou didst it. 

And thus is the providence of God teaching us the high- 
est lesson of trust, as well as the constant duty ef submis- 
sion. Some things in this providence are so open and leg- 
ible, that only an atheist can be blind to them ; others are 
so mysterious, that only God himself can interpret them 
unto us. How plainly, for example, during these four 
years of embittered strife and untold calamities, he has 
taught us the inmost meaning of this war as a punishment 
for our national sins, and as involving the highest moral 
aims and issues. Who now doubts that the sin of slavery 
was in part to be atoned for by our sufferings and blood ? 
that a God of justice has been vindicating the rights of the 
oppressed ? and that in this he has been true and righteous 
altogether % Who now can doubt that the war has been 
so desperate and prolonged, in part that its great moral 
issue might be made up, and that its ethical lessons 
might be imprinted as with the point of a diamond, 
as in lines of fire, upon the nation's conscience and 
heart? As our late President, in his last Inaugural, so 



SMITH. 363 

solemnly said : — "If we shall suppose American slavery 
one of those offences which in the providence of God must 
needs come, but which, having continued through his ap- 
pointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives 
io both North and South this terrible war, as was due to 
those by whom the offence came, we shall not discern that 
there is any departure from those Divine attributes which 
believers in the living God always ascribe to him." And 
who can now doubt that the great Emancipation Procla- 
mation of Abraham Lincoln was the turning-point in the 
strife, the decision on which all was hanging ; that it gave 
to the North its moral supremacy, while it added two 
hundred thousand ardent patriots to our armies ; that it 
took from the rebellion its last prop, and from foreign 
powers all possibility of intervention against the repub- 
lic ? And what a wonder-working providence appears in 
all the knots and stadia of our slow yet ever growing suc- 
cess : in the unexampled supply of armed men to meet 
each new emergency; in the stimulus given to ]abor, and 
the increase of our resources from month to month, from 
year to year; in the decrease of poverty and crime 
through all the North, and in its never-failing crops ; in 
the moral training of our people, making them willing to 
endure hardships and to give up what was best and dear- 
est to them for the sake of the good cause ; in the open- 
handed devotion with which the sicknesses and wounds of 
our suffering and dying soldiers have been ministered to in 
the hospital and on the field of battle by an army of self- 
denying men and women all through the land, spreading 
the broad mantle of charity over the horrors and carnage 
of war ; in reviving and deepening the love of the Union 
and its glorious flag, and identifying the cause of the na- 
tion with the cause of human freedom ; in the fact that our 
very defeats as well as in our successes have subserved the 



364 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

o'ermastering end; in our successive changes of comman- 
ders until we put the right men in the right places, and 
the foremost captain in the foremost place of all, giving 
concentration and unity to our scattered hosts ; in guard- 
ing the land against latent conspiracy and sedition at the 
North, as well as against open treason and rebellion at the 
South ; in carrying us safely through the most costly war 
ever waged, and enabling us, as a people, to shoulder and 
carry the staggering burden of our national debt, without 
a sensible diminution of the permanent capital of the coun- 
try; and, above all this, in that ever-deepening trust in 
God's guidance and recognition of his authority, which 
have pervaded the very heart of this people as never be- 
fore, imparting the assured confidence that their deeds and 
sacrifices were furthering the highest temporal ends of Di- 
vine justice, wisdom and- love. In all these things the lead- 
ings of Divine Providence have been so manifold and con- 
spicuous, that even the thoughtless have been led to join 
in the adoration : " The Lord he is God, and beside him 
there is none else." Nor is this providence less marked, 
had we time to trace it, in the course of affairs in respect 
to the revolted States, revealing by a sure process the in- 
most nature of a rebellion, formed and impelled in the in- 
terests of a slave-holding oligarchy. It was perjured in its 
very beginning, and reckless of truth and law, imperious, 
denunciatory and violent, acting on the principle that might 
makes right; it squandered lives and property in reckless 
disregard of all interests but those of the dominant class, 
and carried on warfare with such barbarities towards our 
wounded and imprisoned soldiers as no modern civilized na- 
tion has ever known ; and it has reaped the reward of these 
foul crimes in the impoverishment of States, in the de- 
struction of a large majority of their white male popula- 
tion in the very prime of manhood, and in bringing 



SMITII. 



mourning and desolation into a million families all o ver 
our wide republic. Fearful has already been their pun- 
ishment ; but its full measure no human tongue can tell. 
This rebellion will live in all history as one of the most 
awful of national crimes, followed by a no less signal ret- 
ribution, illustrating the severity of the Divine judgments. 
When God's judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants 
will learn righteousness. 

And now to these examples of Divine Providence in 
our national affairs, has been added yet another, in some 
respects the most affecting, and certainly the most unex- 
pected of all, coming without warning, like the stroke of 
a thunderbolt from the clear sky, and at the very moment 
when the land was rejoicing in the plentitude of its victo- 
ries. God has turned our joy into mourning, and the 
wail of grief chokes the utterance of the song of triumph. 

A crime has been committed, unparalleled in the annals 
of modern history. The chosen head of our nation has 
fallen by the frenzy of an assassin. The land mourns for 
its chief with such unanimity of sorrow as to show that 
republics are not ungrateful. Never was a king borne to 
his burial with such regal honors. On Wednesday last, 
through all the land from Maine to California, by all com- 
munions, in every church, funeral services were held with 
solemn rites and unfeigned grief. Almost every house, 
almost every person, bore some badge of mourning. A 
nation bowed before its God, stricken and sorrowing ; its 
speech was low out of the dust. And so will it continue 
while the sacred remains of him we loved are borne in 
solemn pomp, with all the pageantry of woe, for fifteen 
hundred miles, through many of the chief cities of our 
country, until they are brought to his distant home in 
Springfield, which he has not re-visited since he there bade 
his fellow-citizens fare well four years ago, with the afi'ecting 



366 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

words : " I know not how soon I shall see you again. A duty 
devolves upon me which is, perhaps, greater than that 
which has devolved upon any other man since the days 
of Washington. He never would have succeeded except 
for the aid of Divine Providence, upon which he at all 
times relied. I feel that I cannot succeed without the 
same Divine aid which sustained him, and in the same 
Almighty- Being I place my reliance for support ; and I 
hope you, my friends, will all pray that I may receive that 
Divine assistance, without which I cannot succeed, but 
with which success is certain. Again I bid you all an af- 
fectionate farewell." These simple, trustful words be- 
came at once dear to us ; now they are embalmed in our 
memory forever, and every generation of coining time 
shall read them with tears. We now know that they 
came from the heart of a martyr. And as here, so through 
all time, the names of Lincoln and Washington will be 
linked in the. nation's memory, and embalmed in the na- 
tion's heart. Different as they were in their training and 
character, they were both equally the vessels of Omnipo- 
tence ; God chose them to do an unequalled work, not 
only for this land, but also for mankind. 

The death of the humblest man by malice and violence 
arouses deep indignation, and an instant resentment de- 
mands the punishment of the murderer or he that 
sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. 
The assassination of the beloved ruler of a mighty nation 
in the very crisis of a nation's fate, at first strikes all men 
dumb with consternation at the atrocity of the deed ; and 
next demands that justice be executed, with a voice so 
clear and irresistible that all fine-spun sentimentalism 
about the wrong of capital punishment is consumed in the 
blaze of a righteous wrath. It is not the language of re- 
venge, but of justice. 



SMITH. 3G7 

This awful deed will take its place among the great 
crimes of history, and stand out with its startling lessons 
more and more distinctly as time recedes. No similar 
crime has been freighted with more momentous issues. 
There have not been many terrible assassinations of great 
rulers in the zenith of their power : Julius Csesar, Henry 
the Fourth of France, William the Silent, Abraham Lin- 
coln. And the name of Booth will go down in history, 
not with that of Brutus, who struck for the cause of the 
republic, but with that of Ravaillac, impelled by fanati- 
cism, and of Gerhard Balthasar, inflamed by the rancor 
of a persecuting church, which afterwards canonized him. 
Eyen these might plead that they acted in behalf of a 
cause which had once inspired the faith of martyrs, and 
done some service to humanity. But the murderer of our 
President seems to have been urged on by a senseless 
hatred, which was born of the worst passions, allied with 
the most desperate of causes, working for the triumph of 
despotism and barbarism. ]STo man was ever murdered 
so wantonly, with such insanity o£ villainy, and no one's 
death was ever so fatal to those that brought it about. 
At the very time the murderer's bullet pierced him, he 
was anxiously meditating the largest amnesty for the foes 
of our republic, and who were his enemies only because 
he was the nation's chosen ruler. lie was then standing 
between them and justice. Words of pardon for his ene- 
mies were upon his dying lips. And what a contrast be- 
tween the victim and the assassin — representing in some 
sort the contesting principles that have been at work in 
this war. The one was simple, guileless, frank, truthful, 
just, ruling in the fear of God : the other was crafty, the- 
atrical, of external polish, yet implacable, wedded to a 
caste, unscrupulous, boastful, defiant of God and man, 
hating with a bitter hate, because he hated the light. 



3G8 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

Alas ! that such a victim was needed for the good cause ! 
Alas ! that any man bom of a woman, who had ever 
heard a mother's voice or known aught of human love, 
could have been left to commit so foul a deed ! 

" Beyond the infinite and boundless reach 
Of mercy, if thou didst this deed of death." 

And he, our President, 

" Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been 
So clear in his great office, that his virtues 
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against 
The deep damnation of his taking off." 

This crime, we say, stands out conspicuous, and full of 
instruction, whether we consider its source, its circum- 
stances, its victim, or its probable influence. 

What was its real and proper instigation ? This is not 
to be sought alone or chiefly is the personal character and 
history of the murderer, but in the influences, which de- 
termined his fateful deed. No matter whether there was 
an avowed and wide-spread conspiracy or not, his murder 
was the fruit of a conspiracy. It is the rebellion itself, 
taking the form of an incarnate fiend ; it is the rebellion 
concentrated and impersonated, all its principles and mo- 
tives gathered together in one fatal stroke. It is secession, 
treason, perjury, cruelty, fraud, and bitter hatred, getting 
hold of a man as with a demoniacal possession, and trans- 
forming him into a fiend. It is the despair of a desperate 
and lost cause in its last blind and infuriate assault upon 
a righteous, civilized and benevolent government. It is 
the very spirit of slavery, its pride of caste, its impatience 
of restraint, its ungovernable passions, its rooted selfish- 
ness, its malignity and barbarism when fully roused, its 
recklessness of all obligations human or Divine ; and, we 
may add, its frantic and impotent fury against the hand- 



SMITH. 309 

writing on the wall — in its last expiring act, intended to 
show ns, so that none shall ever forget it, against what 
we have been contending, and that our costly sacrifices 
have been well offered if this foul spirit can be forever 
ejected from the body politic. 

The circumstances of this crime will also ever give it a 
marked place in history. In different forms it seems to 
have been long premeditated ; and at last it was astutely 
planned, with a wide foresight of contingencies. It was 
a most foul and deliberate murder, executed in more than 
the light and crowd of a common noon-day even in a pop- 
ulous city ; and yet the well-known assassin by his very 
daring managed to escape, and has since as yet been un- 
tracked. In an instant, unwarned, it struck down the head 
of the republic, all unarmed, all unsuspicious; -on the 
evening of Good Friday, when a still more awful sin was 
commemorated ; at the close of a day when our nation's 
flag had again been planted with joyful shouts upon the 
walls of Fort Sumter, where first it was trailed in the dust 
by our foes. On this very day Mr. Lincoln, it is said, had 
been expressing such a feeling of relief from exhausting 
cares as he had not known for years. Many of his highest 
hopes had been fulfilled. Through four long years he had 
watched and prayed ; and the rays of the coming morning 
had just struck upon his vision, when the light of his eyes 
was at once and forever quenched. Yictory was every- 
where crowning our arms in that last masterly campaign, 
more complete in its plans and execution than any cam- 
paign since the wars of the first JSapoleon. The end for 
which our care-worn President had been toiling seemed to 
be in his very grasp. He was enthroned as never before 
in the hearts of his countrymen. No man in this world 
held a more lofty or a more responsible position ; none 

seemed so needful for the welfare of the state. In the 
17* 



370 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

noon-tide of his career he was struck down suddenly ; and 
after he fell no .word passed his lips, until he slowly 
breathed his last amid the grief and silent awe of a whole 
nation. 

What an impressive lesson of the vanity of all human 
hopes ! of the frailty of all human dependence ! It seems 
to say to every one in this land : — Our days are swifter 
than a post ; they flee away. They are passed away as 
the swift ships ; as the eagle that hastetli to his prey. We 
know not what a day nor an hour may bring forth. 

But his work, may we not say % was done, and well done. 
He was true to the last ; and he died in the zenith of his 
well-earned fame. His care-worn and sad face, with its 
ever-benignant smile, seems now, as we recall it, to have 
indicated a certain presentiment of destiny. He may have 
had a dim consciousness, that thus it might be, from the 
time of the first plot against his sacred life, on his journey 
to Washington just before his first inauguration. Some 
times he alluded to it, as in his well-remembered speech at« 
Philadelphia about two years ago. But yet he was guard- 
ed against all harm, until by his triumphant re-election the 
success of the national cause was well-nigh assured. He 
lived to see the great points gained for which he had been 
struggling. He had early expressed the determination of 
retaking all the fortified places that had been wrenched 
from the nation's hands ; and by the fall of Mobile the 
day before he died, all east of the Mississippi had become 
ours. His place in history is assured. He is the costliest 
sacrifice to the great slaveholders' rebellion of the nine- 
teenth century. He is the chief victim of this dire con- 
spiracy against human rights and Divine law. His sacred 
imao-e shall henceforth be encircled with the aureole that 
befits a martyr's brow ; for, as much as any man that ever 
fell, is he a martyr to the principles for which he lived and 



SMITH. 371 

died. And his name shall be named among the great ben- 
efactors of the race. In every earthly sense, death to him 
is swallowed np in victory. And in a more than earthly 
sense, we believe that this is also true of him ; for Abra- 
ham Lincoln was a man of prayer, of simple trust in God, 
acting upon and repeating, in his later years, according to 
the light given unto him, those words of our blessed Lord : 
" Not my will, but thine be done." 

And thus this greatest tragedy of our country's history 
is made forever memorable by the character of its victim, 
as well as by its circumstances and instigators. 

Of our late President it may, without extravagant 
eulogy, be said, that he became endeared to the whole 
nation, and won their confidence, as has no other man 
since the days of Washington. Ana this was the work 
of five short years. When nominated for the Presidency 
he was neither widely nor intimately known by the mass 
of the people. Almost from the necessity of the circum- 
stances in which he has since been placed, he has been 
vilified, traduced, and misinterpreted without stint. 
Through obloquy he won his way to fame. And what a 
fame, to be built up in so short a time ; and how worthily, 
on the whole, it has been won ! Public confidence in him 
has been steadily growing ever since he came to the chief 
chair of state ; his own high character was also ever 
growing, until he became the man in whom the great 
body of the people felt an almost unlimited trust. This 
was owing, not to any stirring elocpience, of which Ameri- 
cans are so passionately fond, for he was not an eloquent 
man ; not to his political astuteness, for herein he was 
surpassed by many of his compeers ; not to his skill in 
using the arts of a demagogue, for he disowned the ways 
of intrigue and bargain ; but partly to the fact of his pro- 
verbial honesty ; in part to the conviction that he was 



372 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

truthful in speech and character ; partly to his keen logic, 
accompanied with a certain flavor of quaintness and 
homeliness in his popular addresses ; in part to the sim- 
plicity of his character ; partly to that kindliness, which 
fascinated those who knew him best ; in part to his broad 
and genial sympathies with the popular mind and heart ; 
yet chiefly, perhaps, to his being to so unusual an extent 
the embodiment and representative of the average and 
substantial character of the American people, especially 
as brought out in the great battle we are now waging. 

Abraham Lincoln was not a model man, but he was a 
representative man. Called to what was at that juncture 
the very highest and most important post in the world's 
affairs, he so discharged the sacred trust and bore the 
heavy burden laid upon him, that now all men see that 
he was a faithful, wise and sagacious ruler, misled by no 
extremes, blinded by no false lights, wedded to no im- 
practicable theory, waiting for events long enough to 
study them, yet speaking and acting decisively when the 
opportunity came: thus being the man we needed to 
represent us in the perilous times when he was called to 
play so high a part. Many were oft asking for sharper 
words and more abrupt action ; others were ever fearful 
that rashness would rule the hour and hurry us on to 
anarchy. But there was a wise man at the helm, and his 
hand, and his alone, has firmly held it during these four 
eventful years ; and through all danger the ship of state 
has made its course, avoiding the shoals and the breakers, 
until it is now sailing on again, the storm behind it, upon 
the broad and open sea. It is verily God that hath 
wrought this ; and he wrought it through the mingled 
caution and firmness of our late President. 

Mr. Lincoln, we say, was a representative man in his 
epoch — a fair representative of the best average character 



q no 



SMITH. o i 6 

of the loyal people of the United States in our great cri- 
sis. Though he had not the breeding and mien of the 
courtier, he had the breeding and bearing of a strong and 
genuine manhood. God does not always choose those 
persons to execute his purposes, whom short-sighted men 
might think best fitted for the task. Hard work requires 
strong muscles. "When great principles are to be main- 
tained, we need manly sense, unblemished integrity, and 
practical sagacity, rather than fine-spun theories, courtly 
grace, or the arts of the skillful demagogue. In a great 
crisis, the demand is for a man in whom we can have en- 
tire confidence. He may make mistakes, for he is 
human ; but he will rectify them, for he is intent on the 
public welfare. We like a strong man, of whom it can 
be truly said, that he means well, and is about right. This 
is better than genius, or eloquence, or external polish ; it 
is better than either conservatism or radicalism, for it is 
the mean between the two. Such a man the people 
found in Abraham Lincoln ; and they gave him their 
confidence in spite of the mere politicians and wire- 
pullers. He was emphatically our representative man. 
He was this in his homely sense, his practical shrewd- 
ness, his love of a good story and an apt illustration, his 
logical use of the queerest anecdotes, his constant appeals 
to a roundabout common-sense ; as also in his kindliness 
of heart, his sympathy w T ith the details of private griefs, 
and his magnanimity towards his enemies. He was our 
representative, too, in his willingness to hear all sides be- 
fore he made up his mind ; in his apparent hesitation 
about coming to a final decision when such vast interests 
were at stake ; in his desire to see the way out before he 
put his foot in; and in his inflexible earnestness and in- 
vincible pertinacity when the decision was at length 
reached. He had the rare sagacity, better than any 



DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 



theoretic anticipations, of feeling as it were the pulse of 
the nation ; of knowing how far it was safe to go at any 
one time ; of pausing when doubtful ; of keeping just far 
enough in advance of the current as to seem to guide it 
while really borne upon it, being neither dashed upon 
the rocks ahead nor left struggling in the eddy behind. 
And if he had not done so — just about this and neither 
more nor less — who can tell how different might have 
been the result in many a trying hour % If we were now 
asked, who, during the last four years, has, on the whole, 
best represented, and so guided, this whole nation in its 
fearful burdens and struggles, we must, after all, I think, 
name the name of Lincoln. We have had abler politi- 
cians, more eloquent lawyers, more polished diplomats ; 
men more learned in literature, history and law ; more 
magnetic leaders, and more decisive characters ; but we 
have not had for many a year a wiser, a better, a more 
patient and faithful ruler, nor one who has so deeply 
touched the best sympathies and emotions of the general 
mind and conscience of this nation. He lacked enthusi- 
asm, but enthusiasm is apt to be partial ; he could not 
stir the people as with the voice of a trumpet, but many 
a time his wise and tender and trustful words have swept 
the chords of their better natures. Even his favorite 
measures he never sought to press by threats and violence ; 
and yet most of them were carried in spite of all opposi- 
tion ; and he never urged those that were merely tentative 
and involved no final principles, when they were judged 
inexpedient. He was a thorough republican in the sim- 
plicity of his character, habits and speech, never elated 
by his honors, nor affecting greatness. Without pride 
and without vanity he bore the dignities of his high 
office. 

He was also a thorough republican, and in this sense 



SMITH. 6 I O 

too a representative man, in his inwrought conviction of 
the safety and power of our republican institutions. lie 
loved the republic as a republic. His heart and mind were 
steeped in its fundamental principles. He believed that 
the people might be trusted with power. Our institutions 
had made him what he was, and he loved a country which 
could so mould men, taking them from the lowliest places 
and setting their feet in the palaces of kings. He had 
known the full stimulus and blessings of this government, 
and felt that it was strong and must endure. Next to his 
trust in God was his trust in this people, under the belief 
that God was guiding it to a high destiny. In the dark- 
est hours he still believed that the republic was safe and 
would come out triumphant in the end. He did not ad- 
mit the thought that secession could divide us, or rebellion 
subdue us, or slavery rule us. For all these States he saw 
only one country, one constitution, and one destiny, and 
that destiny determined by the principle of freedom. 

He likewise represented the prevailing sentiment of the 
country in respect to the causes and results of the war, as 
well as the method of its prosecution in relation to the sub- 
ject of slavery. He saw in slavery the real cause of the 
rebellion, and came slowly yet irresistibly to the convic- 
tion, that slavery must die in order that the nation might 
live. And ever after, no man in the land was more re- 
solved, that the end of the war must also be end of slavery 
in all the revolted States. This moral issue forced itself up- 
on him with ever-increasing earnestness and distinctness, 
and found its most definite expression in the ever memora- 
ble words of his last inaugural address — a document 
which, for its originality, simplicity, wisdom and moral 
earnestness, will go down to other and far-distant days. 
In solemn words our calamities are traced to the Divine 
judgments, which are confessed to be true and righteous 



376 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

altogether. And then his wise and noble heart finds ut- 
terance : — u With malice towards none, with charity for 
all, with firmness in the right as God gives ns to see the 
right, let ns strive on to finish the work we are in, to 
bind up the nation's wounds, to care for those who shall 
have borne the battle, and for their widows and orphans. 
And with all this let us strive after a just and lasting 
peace among ourselves and with all nations." 

Equally conspicuous, and also expressive of the heart of 
this people, was his firm trust in Divine Providence, as 
ever guiding us, though in ways we knew not of. This, 
we doubt not, was the key-stone of his policy, as it has 
been the corner-stone of our strength. It was often ex- 
pressed, and never more touchingly than in a letter he 
wrote to that well-known philanthropist, Miss Eliza P. 
Gurney, dated Executive Mansion, Washington, Septem- 
ber 4, 1864, in the course of which he says : — " I am much 
indebted to the Christian people of this country for their 
Christian prayers and consolations, and to no one of them 
more than to yourself. The purposes of the Almighty are 
perfect and must prevail, though we erring mortals may 
fail to perceive them in advance. Surely he intends some 
great good to follow this mighty convulsion, which no 
mortal could make and no mortal can stay." Such words 
are doubly dear to us now that he is gone ; they are an in- 
valuable legacy. God will not forget or leave a nation 
that has such rulers. 

In coming, now, to speak of the influence and effects of 
this great crime, we must never forget, that though clouds 
and darkness may surround it, yet, with all its mystery and 
all its horrors, it is ordained by Him of whom it is said, 
that justice and judgment are the habitation of his throne. 
He who girded our late ruler as he did Cyrus of old, has 
taken him from us, and thus bids us learn the lesson of 



6MITH. 377 

submission to his sovereign authority. "We may perchance 
vainly ask, why was such a precious sacrifice needed ? 
Why might not the thousands already slaughtered suffice ? 
Why cannot a good cause succeed except by the blood of 
patriots and martyrs ? Why must the death of the world's 
best friends be evermore the price of the world's best bless- 
ings ? But this is the law of life, the law of history, the 
method of Christian progress. The higher must live and 
die for the lower, that the lower may be disenthralled and 
elevated. So it always has been. In the perennial and 
awe-inspiring conflict between sin and righteousness, so 
it must needs be. Redemption is purchased by sacrifice. 
God spared not his own Son ; God spares not the best of 
men. This shows us, and is meant to show us, not only 
the evil of sin, but also the priceless worth of justice and 
righteousness. And so it is here and now. This country 
never fully realized all the turpitude and enormity of this 
rebellion, until our President fell a victim to it. It never 
knew how costly were the principles and blessings for 
which we have been contending, until it estimated their 
worth in this great sacrifice. Now it has learned the 
lesson, and it will never forget it. 

Sin is sin; perjury is perjury; oppression is oppression ; 
treason is treason ; assassination is assassination. If there 
is a crime, there must be a penalty. It is a wrong to the 
innocent to let the guilty escape. The spurious mercy of 
the hour may be cruelty to the next generation. It is 
trifling with our country's future welfare, to blot out the 
record of all these crimes, and welcome to hospitable 
boards and public honors the very leaders of the most self- 
ish, inexcusable and barbarous revolt in history. It is an 
old maxim, quoted by jurists :— il JVe pereat Israel , pereat 
Absalom;" "Absolom must perish that Israel may not 
perish." Mercy may and must be shown to those that 



378 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

have been hoodwinked and misled ; but that mercy can 
be made safe and right, only as justice is meted out to those 
who have brought all these flagrant woes and unnumber- 
ed ills upon our peaceful land, and 

"many a soul 
Of mighty warriors to the viewless shades 
Untimely sent." 

If these leaders live it must not be in this land ; those 
that plotted and fought to destroy their country must 
henceforth be without a country ; and through dishonored 
lives, with the mark of Cain upon them, go down to un- 
honored graves. From half a million of graves all over 
the land, from widows and orphans in every hamlet, from 
the lips of justice, from the very heart of liberty itself, 
comes up the cry for justice upon the guilty chieftains of 
this dire revolt. Their names must be evermore named 
with those of Catiline and Nero ; and we will teach our 
children, and they theirs, to carry them down through all 
coming time as the dread symbols of an unequalled per- 
fidy and an unpardoned crime against humanity itself. 
There are some crimes that a nation cannot forgive. Na- 
tions have no future being ; and national justice must be 
executed here or it never will be executed. 

If we are to have a permanent peace, not merely the 
form, but the animating spirit of the rebellion mus be sub- 
dued. And this can only be done in two ways. That 
caste in which the revolt was rooted, must as a caste be ex- 
tirpated ; partly by emancipation thoroughly carried out ; 
partly by executing justice upon the chief authors and 
abettors of the crime. The other way is, by pouring all 
our treasures of education, philanthropy and religion into 
the States now impoverished and devastated by war, and 
uniting them to us by new and closer ties. And this last 
work is to be our greatest work ; and in it will be found 



SMITH. 3 < 9 

and realized one of the greatest and most needed triumphs 
of modern civilization. Especially must we use all means 
to raise up the class of freed men to the dignity and respon- 
sibilities of their new position, as men and as citizens. The 
prejudice of color must yield to the claims of civilization, 
philanthropy and religion. 

And in all our grief let us not forget the mighty work 
which God hath wrought upon and in us during these 
quick-passing and eventful years, in which Abraham Lin- 
coln sat in the highest seat of the nation. So great a 
revolution was, perhaps, never accomplished in so short 
a time, still leaving the old foundation and structure of 
the state unharmed. Four millions of bondmen have 
been virtually freed. Freedom has become the settled 
policy of the whole country. The unity of the republic 
has been ensured for a long generation. Our supremacy 
on this continent is no longer doubtful. No European 
power will here attempt any new projects of subjugation 
or colonization. ~No foreign nation will willingly molest 
us. Our resources are boundless ; a new tide of emigra- 
tion will soon set in; in all industrial pursuits we shall be 
independent of foreign aid. We have passed, amid these 
throes, from the careless and boastful youth to the more 
firm and thoughtful manhood of our career. We are 
more truly a nation now than we have ever before been ; 
we are independent of European thought and opinion ; we 
are self-reliant. We have taken our place, in full panoply, 
in the very van of the world's progress, representing, as 
dare no other people, the rights of humanity and the 
worth of man. Our place in the general history of the 
world is assured, as is also the place of him who, at such 
a juncture, during just these years of travail and trans- 
ition, was the lawful and the honored ruler of the repub- 
lic. If Lincoln lived for fame, he surely has his reward ; 



£>$0 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

as he did not live for fame, but for truth and justice, .his 
reward shall be greater yet. 

Let us, then, this day thank God that the republic still 
lives, stronger than ever before ; its foes put under its feet ; 
its revilers put to shame ; yea, cemented still more strongly 
by the sacred blood which was shed in passion to destroy 
its life. The workman is gone; the work abides. A 
reckless assassin assailed the impersonated majesty of the 
state, and every drop of blood from those gaping wounds 
has made this imperial republic stronger yet ; has made 
its pulse beat with a higher vitality — a life more full of 
blessings to those that love it — a life throbbing with inten- 
ser indignation against those who would assail its rights 
and undermine its power. The republic lives ! Hardly 
was there a pause except of momentary awe, as it held its 
bated breath, incredulous of this awful crime, and then it 
moved right on again with conscious power ; and its feet 
are more swift, and its eye is more keen, and its mailed 
hand is more stalwart than ever before against those who 
plot its downfall, defy its laws, and infringe its rightful 
honor. The republic lives ! Ah ! not in vain have been 
these cruel years of long suspense and awful strife, 

" This purple testament of bloody war ;'* 

these precious lives of our best* and noblest sons slain in 
defence of its imperilled majesty; these costly sacrifices 
for the down-trodden ; these awe-inspiring lessons of a God 
of justice. From this baptism of blood it shall emerge a 
regenerated nation, giving equal justice to all, a refuge as 
never before to the oppressed from every land. In an am- 
pler freedom and a purified national life, the coming gener- 
ation shall pluck the fair and ripe fruits growing from the 
soil so rudely and deeply turned by the plough-share, and 
yet ever so hallowed. Liberty shall reign through the land, 



SMITH. 3S1 

and then there will be true human brotherhood, and so a 
lasting peace. And the blessed Gospel, for which these con- 
vulsions and overturnings do but prepare the way, shall be 
preached unto all the people, and we will pray the Lord 
to pour out his Spirit upon all flesh ; and so shall the land 
be quickened with a higher life and bound together as 
never before. And the Lord will make use of us to spread 
his name and his praise, not only over our continent, but 
to the isles of the sea and the ends of the earth. These 
earthly conflicts prepare the way for the coming of the 
Son of Man. And when he cometh there shall be no more 
war ; for he is the Prince of Peace. And to him be glory 
for ever and ever. Amen. 



ORATION. 



HON. GEORGE BANCROFT. 



Our grief and horror at the crime which has clothed the 
continent in mourning, find no adequate expression in 
words, and no relief in tears. The President of the Uni- 
ted States of America has fallen by the hands of an assas- 
sin. Neither the office with which he was invested by 
the approved choice of a mighty people, nor the most sim- 
ple-hearted kindliness of nature, could save him from the 
fiendish passions of relentless fanaticism. The wailings 
of the millions attend his remains as they are borne in sol- 
emn procession over our great rivers, along the seaside, 
beyond the mountains, across the prairie, to their resting 
place in the valley*of the Mississippi. His funeral knell 
vibrates through the world, and the friends of freedom of 
every tongue and in every clime . are his mourners. 

Too few days have passed away since Abraham Lincoln 
stood in the flush of vigorous manhood, to permit any at- 
tempt at an analysis of his character or an exposition of 
his career. We find it hard to believe that his large eyes, 
which in their softness and beauty expressed nothing but 
benevolence and gentleness, are closed in death ; we al- 
most look for the pleasant smile that brought out more 

383 



381 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

vividly the earnest cast of his features, which were serious 
even to sadness. A few years ago he was a village attor- 
ney, engaged in the support of a rising family, unknown 
to fame, scarcely named beyond his neighborhood ; his 
administration made him the most conspicuous man in his 
country, and drew on him first the astonished gaze, and 
then the respect and admiration of the world. 

Those who come after us will decide how much of the 
wonderful results of his public career is due to his own 
good common sense, his shrewd sagacity, readiness of wit, 
quick interpretation of the public mind, his rare combi- 
nation of fixedness and pliancy, his steady tendency of 
purpose ; how much to the American people, who, as he 
walked with them side by side, inspired him with their 
own wisdom and energy ; and how much to the overrul- 
ing laws of the moral world, by which the selfishness of 
evil is made to defeat itself. But after every allowance, 
it will remain that members of the government which pre- 
ceded his administration opened the gates to treason, and 
he closed them ; that when he went to Washington the 
ground on which he trod shook under his feet, and he left 
the republic on a solid foundation ; that traitors had seized 
public forts and arsenals, and he recovered them for the 
United States, to whom they belonged^ that the capital, 
which he found the abode of slaves, is now the home 
only of the free ; that the boundless public domain which 
was grasped at, and, in a great measure, held for the diffu- 
sion of slavery, is now irrevocably devoted to freedom ; 
that then men talked a jargon of a balance of power in a 
republic between slave States and free States, and now the 
foolish words are blown away forever by the breath of Ma- 
ryland, Missouri, and Tennessee ; that a terrible cloud of 
political heresy rose from the abyss, threatening to hide 
the light of the sun, and under its darkness a rebellion. 



BANCROFT. 385 

was growing into indefinable proportions ; now the atmos- 
phere is purer than ever before, and the insurrection is 
vanishing away ; the country is cast into another mould, 
and the gigantic system of wrong, which had been the 
work of more than two centuries, is dashed down, we hope 
forever. And as to himself, personally: he was then 
scoffed at by the proud as unfit for his station, and now 
against usage of later years and in spite of numerous com- 
petitors he was the unbiased and the undoubted choice 
of the American people for a second term of service. 
Through all the mad business of treason he retained the 
sweetness of a most placable disposition ; and the slaugh- 
ter of myriads of the best on the battle-field, and the more 
terrible destruction of our men in captivity by the slow 
torture of exposure and starvation, l^ad never been able to 
provoke him into harboring one vengeful feeling or one 
purpose of cruelty. 

How shall the nation most completely show its sorrow 
at Mr. Lincoln's death ? How shall it best honor his 
memory ? There can be but one answer. He was struck 
down when he was highest in its service, and in strict con- 
formity with duty was engaged in carrying out principles 
affecting its life, its good name, and its relations to the 
cause of freedom and the progress of mankind. Grief must 
take the character of action, and breathe itself forth in 
the assertion of the policy to which he fell a victim. The 
standard which he held in his hand must be uplifted 
again higher and more firmly than before, and must be 
carried on to triumph. Above everything else, his proc- 
lamation of the first day of January, 1863, declaring 
throughout the parts of the country in rebellion, the free- 
dom of all persons who had been held as slaves, must be 
affirmed and maintained. 

Events, as thev rolled onward, have removed every 

18 



386 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

doubt of the legality and binding force of that procla- 
mation. The country and the rebel government have 
each laid claim to the public service of the slave, and yet 
but one of the two can have a rightful claim to such ser- 
vice. That rightful claim belongs to the United States, 
because every one born on their soil, with the few excep- 
tions of the children of travellers and transient residents, 
owes them a primary allegiance. Every one so born has 
been counted among those represented in Congress ; every 
slave has ever been represented in Congress ; imperfectly 
and wrongly it may be — but still has been counted and 
represented. The slave born on our soil always owed al- 
legiance to the general government. It may in time past 
have been a qualified allegiance, manifested through his 
master, as the allegiance of a ward through its guardian, 
or of an infant through its parent. But when the master 
became false to his allegiance, the slave stood face to face 
with his country ; and his allegiance, which may before 
have been a qualified one, became direct and immediate. 
His chains fell off, and he rose at once in the presence of 
the nation, bound, like the rest of us, to its defence. Mr. 
Lincoln's proclamation did but take notice of the already 
existing right of the bondman to freedom. The treason 
of the master made it a public crime for the slave to con- 
tinue his obedience ; the treason of a State set free the 
collective bondmen of that State. 

This doctrine is supported by the analogy of prece- 
dents. In the times of feudalism the treason of the lord 
of the manor deprived him of his serfs ; the spurious feu- 
dalism that existed among us differs in many respects 
from the feudalism of the middle ages, but so far the pre- 
cedent runs parallel with the present case ; for treason 
the master then, for treason the master now, loses his 
slaves. 



BANCROFT. 3S7 

In the middle ages the sovereign appointed another 
lord over the serfs and the lands which they Cultivated ; 
in onr day the sovereign makes them masters of their own 
. persons, lords over themselves. 

It has been said that w T e are at war, and that emanci- 
pation is not a belligerent right. The objection disappears 
before analysis. In a war between independent pow- 
ers the invading foreigner invites to his standard all who 
will give him aid, whether bond or free, and he rewards 
them according to his ability and his pleasure, with gifts 
or freedom : but when at a peace, he withdraws from the 
invaded country, he must take his aiders and comforters 
with him ; or if he leaves them behind, where he has no 
court to enforce his decrees, he can give them no secu- 
rity, unless it be by the stipulations of a treaty. In a 
civil war it is altogether different. There, when rebellion is 
crushed, the old government is restored, and its courts 
resume their jurisdiction. So it is with us ; the United 
States have courts of their own, that must punish the 
guilt of treason and vindicate the freedom of persons 
whom the fact of rebellion has set free. 

Nor may it be said, that because slavery existed in 
most of the States when the Union was formed, it cannot 
rightfully be interfered with now. A change has taken 
place, such as Madison foresaw, and for which he pointed 
out the remedy. The constitutions of States had been 
transformed before the plotters of treason carried them 
away into rebellion. When the Federal Constitution was 
framed, general emancipation was thought to be near ; 
and everywhere the respective legislatures had authority, 
in the exercise of their ordinary functions, to do away 
with slavery. Since that time the attempt has been 
made in what are called slave States, to render the 
condition of slavery perpetual ; and events have proved, 



388 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN!. 

with the clearness of demonstration, that a constitution 
which seeks to continue a caste of hereditary bondmen 
through endless generations is inconsistent with the ex- 
istence of republican institutions. 

So, then, the new President and the people of the United 
States must insist that the proclamation of freedom shall 
stand as a reality. And, moreover, the people must never 
cease to insist that the Constitution shall be so amended as 
utterly to prohibit slavery on any part of our soil for ever- 
more. 

Alas! that a State in our vicinity should withhold its 
assent to this last beneficent measure: its refusal was an 
encouragement to our enemies equal to the gain of a 
pitched battle ; and delays the only hopeful method of 
pacification. The removal of the cause of the rebellion is 
not only demanded by justice ; it is the policy of mercy, 
making room for a wider clemency ; it is the part of order 
against a chaos of controversy ; its success brings with it 
true reconcilement, a lasting peace, a continuous growth 
of confidence through an assimilation of the social con- 
dition. 

Here is the fitting expression of the mourning of to-day. 

And let no lover of his country say that this warning is 
uncalled for. The cry is delusive that slavery is dead. 
Even now it is nerving itself for a fresh struggle for con- 
tinuance. The last winds from the South waft to us the 
sad intelligence that a man who had surrounded himself 
with the glory of the most brilliant and most varied 
achievements, who but a week ago was counted with affec- 
tionate pride among the greatest benefactors of his coun- 
try and the ablest generals of all time, has initiated the 
exercise of more than the whole powder of the Executive, 
and under the name of peace has, perhaps unconsciously, 
revived slavery, and given the hope of security and politic 



BANCROFT. 389 

cal power to traitors,. from the Chesapeake to the Hio 
Grande. Why could he not remember the dying advice 
of Washington, never to draw the sword but for self-de- 
fence or the rights of his country, and when drawn, never 
to sheath it till its work should be accomplished? And, 
yet, from this ill-considered act, which the people with 
one united voice condemn, no great evil will follow save 
the shadow on his own fame, and that, also, we hope will 
pass away. The individual, even in the greatness of mili- 
tary glory, sinks into insignificance before the resistless 
movements of ideas in the history of man. No one can 
turn back or stay the march of Providence. 

No sentiment of despair may mix with our sorrow. We 
owe it to the memory of the dead, we owe it to the cause 
of popular liberty throughout the world, that the sudden 
crime which has taken the life of the President of the 
United States shall not produce the least impediment in 
the smooth course of public affairs. This great city, in 
the midst of unexampled emblems of deeply-seated grief, 
has sustained itself with composure and magnanimity. It 
has nobly done its part in guarding against the derange- 
ment of business or the slightest shock to public credit. 
The enemies of the republic put it to the severest trial ; 
but the voice of faction has not been heard ; doubt and 
despondency have been unknown. In serene majesty the 
country rises in the beauty and strength and hope of youth, 
and proves to the world the quiet energy and the durabil- 
ity of institutions growing out of the reason and aifec!iuns 
of the people. 

Heaven has willed it that the United States shall live. 
The nations of the earth cannot spare them. All the 
worn-out aristocracies of Europe saw in the spurious feu- 
dalism of slaveholding, their strongest outpost, and band- 
ed themselves together with the deadly enemies of our 



3£0 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

national life. If the Old "World will discuss the respec- 
tive advantages of oligarchy or equality; of the union of 
clmrch and state, or the rightful freedom of religion ; of 
land accessihle to the many, or of land monopolized by an 
ever-decreasing number of the few, the United States 
must live to control the decision by their quiet and unob- 
trusive example. It has often and truly been observed, 
that the trust and affection of the masses gather naturally 
round an individual ; if the inquiry is made, whether the 
man so trusted and beloved shall elicit from the reason of 
the people, enduring institutions of their own, or shall se- 
quester political power for a superintending dynasty, the 
United States must live to solve the problem. If a ques- 
tion is raised on the respective merits of Timoleon or Ju- 
lius Caesar, of Washington or Napoleon, the United States 
must be there to call to mind that there were twelve 
Caesars, most of them the opprobrium of the human race, 
and to contrast with them the line of American Presidents. 

The duty of the hour is incomplete, our mourning is in- 
sincere, if, while we express unwavering trust in the great 
principles that underlie our government, we do not also 
give our support to the man to whom the people have en- 
trusted its administration. 

Andrew Johnson is now, by the Constitution, the Presi- 
dent of the United States, and he stands before the world 
as the most conspicuous representative of the industrial 
classes. Left an orphan at four years old, poverty and; 
toil were his steps to honor. His youth was not passed in y 
the halls of colleges ; nevertheless he has received a thor- 
ough political education in statesmanship, in the school 
of the people, and by long experience of public life. A 
village functionary; member successively of each branch 
of the Tennessee Legislature, hearing with a thrill of joy, 
the words, "the Union, it must be preserved;" a rcpre- 



BANCROFT. 301 

rontative in Congress for successive years ; Governor of 
the great State of Tennessee, approved as its Governor 
by re-election; he was at the opening of the rebellion a 
Senator from that State in Congress. Then at the Capitol, 
when Senators, im rebuked by the government, sent word 
by telegram to seize forts and arsenals, he alone from that 
southern region told them what the Government did not 
dare to tell them, that they were traitors, and deserved 
the punishment of treason. Undismayed by a perpetual 
purpose of public enemies to take his life, bearing up 
against the still greater trial of the persecution of his wife 
and children, in due time he went back to his State, de 
termined to restore it to the Union, or die with the 
American flag for his winding sheet. And now, at the 
call of the United States, he has returned to Washington 
as a conqueror, with Tennessee as a free State for his tro- 
phy. It remains for him to consummate the vindication 
of the Union. 

To that Union Abraham Lincoln has fallen a martyr. 
His death, which was meant to sever it beyond repair, 
binds it more closely and more firmly than ever. The 
blow aimed at him, was aimed not at the native of Ken- 
tucky, not at the citizen of Illinois, but at the man, 
who, as President, in the executive branch of the govern- 
ment, stood as the representative of every man in the 
United States. The object of the crime was the life of 
the whole people ; and it wounds the affections of the 
whole people. From Maine to the southwest boundary 
on the Pacific, it makes us one. The country may have 
needed an imperishable grief to touch its inmost feeling. 
The grave that receives the remains of Lincoln, receives 
the costly sacrifice to the Union ; the monument which 
will rise over his body will bear witness to the Union ; 
his enduring memory will assist during countless ages to 



C92 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

bind the States together, and to incite to the love of our 
one undivided, indivisible country. Peace to the ashes of 
our departed friend, the friend of his country and of his 
race. He was happy in his life, for he was the restorer of 
the republic; he was happy in his death, for his martyr- 
dom will plead forever fur the Union of the States and the 
freedom of man. 



ORATION 

AT THE BURIAL AT SPRINGFIELD 



BISHOP SIMPSOK 



Near the capital of this large and growing State of 
Illinois,, in the midst of this beautiful grove, and at the 
open mouth of the vault which has just received the re- 
mains of our fallen chieftain, we gather to pay a tribute of 
respect and to drop the tears of sorrow around the ashes 
of the mighty dead. A little more than four years ago he 
left his plain and quiet home in yonder city, receiving the 
parting words of the concourse of friends who, in the midst 
of the dropping of the gentle shower, gathered around 
him. He spoke of the pain of parting from the place 
where he had lived for a quarter of a century, where his 
children had been born, and his home had been rendered 
pleasant by friendly associations, and, as he left, he made 
an earnest request, in the hearing of some who are present 
at this hour, that, as he was about to enter upon responsi- 
bilities which he believed to be greater than any which had 
fallen upon any man since the days of Washington, the 
people would offer up prayers that God would aid and 
sustain him in the work which they had given him to do. 
His company left your quiet city, but, as it went, snares 
were in waiting for the Chief Magistrate. Scarcely did he 



394 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

escape the dangers of the way or the hands of the assas- 
sin, as he neared Washington ; and I believe he escaped 
only through the vigilance of officers and the prayers ot 
his people, so that the blow was suspended for more than 
four years, which was at last permitted, through the provi- 
dence of God, to fall. 

How different the occasion which witnessed his de- 
parture from that which witnessed his return. Doubtless 
you expected to take him by the hand, and to feel the 
warm grasp which you had felt in other days, and to see 
the tall form walking among you which you had delighted 
to honor. in years past. But he was never permitted to 
come until he came with lips mute and silent, the frame 
encoffined, and a weeping nation following as his mourners. 
Such a scene as his return to you was never witnessed. 
Among the events of history there have been great pro- 
cessions of mourners. There was one for the patriarch 
Jacob, which went up from Egypt, and the Egyptians 
wondered at the evidences of reverence and filial affection 
which came from the hearts of the Israelites. There was 
mourning when Moses fell upon the heights of Pisgah and 
was hid from human view. There have been mournings 
in the kingdoms of the earth when kings and princes have 
fallen, but never was there, in the history of man, such 
mourning as that which has accompanied this funeral pro- 
cession, and has gathered around the mortal remains of 
him who was our loved one, and who now sleeps among us. 
If we glance at the procession which followed him, we see 
how the nation stood aghast. Tears filled the eyes of 
manly, sunburnt faces. Strong men, as they clasped the 
hands of their friends, were unable to find vent for their 



sevipson. 395 

grief in words. Women and little children caught up the 
tidings as they ran through the land, and were melted into 
tears. The nation stood still. Men left their plows in the 
fields and asked what the end should be. The hum of 
manufactories ceased, and the sound of the hammer was 
not heard. Busy merchants closed their doors, and in the 
exchange gold passed no more from hand to hand. Though 
three weeks have elapsed, the nation has scarcely breathed 
easily yet. A mournful silence is abroad upon the land ; 
nor is this mourning confined to any class or to any district 
of country. Men of all political parties, and of all reli- 
gious creeds, have united in paying this mournful tribute. 
The archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church in New 
York and a Protestant minister walked side by side in the 
sad procession, and a Jewish rabbi performed a part of the 
solemn services. 

Here are gathered around his tomb the representatives 
of the army and navy, senators, judges, governors, and 
officers of all the branches of the Government. Here, too, 
are members of civic processions, with men and women 
from the humblest as well as the highest occupations. 
Here and there, too, are tears, as sincere and warm as any 
that drop, which come from the eyes of those whose 
kindred and whose race have been freed from their chains 
by him whom they mourn as their deliverer. More per- 
sons have gazed on the face of the departed than ever 
looked upon the face of any other departed man. More 
races have looked on the procession for 1,600 miles or 
more — by night and by day — by sunlight, dawn, twilight, 
and by torchlight, than ever before watched the progress 
of a procession. 



396 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

"We ask why this wonderful mourning — this great pro- 
cession ? I answer, first, a part of the interest has arisen 
from the times in which we live, and in which he that had 
fallen was a principal actor. It is a principle of our nature 
that feelings, once excited, turn readily from the object by 
which they are excited, to some other object which may for 
the time being take possession of the mind. Another 
principle is, the deepest affections of our hearts gather 
around some human form in which are incarnated the 
living thoughts and ideas of the passing age. If we look 
then at the times, we see an age of excitement. For four 
years the popular heart has been stirred to its inmost 
depth. War had come upon us, dividing families, separa- 
ting nearest and dearest friends — a war, the extent and 
magnitude of which no one could estimate — a war in 
which the blood of brethren was shed by a brother's hand. 
A call for soldiers was made by this voice now hushed, and 
all over the land, from hill and mountain, from plain to 
valley, there sprang up thousands of bold hearts, ready to 
go forth and save our national Union. This feeling o± 
excitement was transferred next into a feeling of deep 
grief because of the dangers in which our country was 
placed. Many said, " Is it possible to save our nation ?" 
Some in our country, and nearly all the leading men in 
other countries, declared it to be impossible to maintain 
rthe Union ; and many an honest and patriotic heart was 
deeply pained with apprehensions of common ruin ; and 
many, in grief and almost in despair, anxiously inquired, 
What shall the end of these things be ? In addition to 
this wives had given their husbands,- mothers their sons, 
the pride and joy of their hearts. They saw them put on 



simpson. 397 

the uniform, they saw them take the martial step, and 
they tried to hide their deep feeling of sadness. Many clear 
ones slept upon the battle-field never to return again, and 
there was -mourning in every mansion and in every cabin 
in our broad land. Then came a feeling of deeper sadness 
as the story came of prisoners tortured to death or starved 
through the mandates of those who are called the re- 
presentatives of the chivalry, and who claimed to be the 
honorable ones of the earth ; and as we read the stories ot 
frames attenuated and reduced to mere skeletons, our 
grief turned partly into horror and partly into a cry for 
vengeance. 

Then this feeling was changed to one of joy. There 
came signs of the end of this rebellion. We followed the 
career of our glorious generals. We saw our army, under 
the command of the brave officer who is guiding this pro- 
cession, climb up the heights of Lookout Mountain and 
drive the rebels from their strongholds. Another brave 
general swept through Georgia, South and North Carolina, 
and drove the combined armies of the rebels before him, 
while the honored Lieutenant-General held Lee and his 
hosts in a death-grasp. 

Then the tidings came that Richmond was evacuated, 
and that Lee had surrendered. The bells rang merrily all 
over the land. The booming of cannon was heard ; 
illuminations and torch-light processions manifested the 
general joy, and families were looking for the speedy 
return of their loved ones from the field of battle. Just 
in the midst of this wildest joy, in one hour — nay, in one 
moment — the tidings thrilled throughout the land that 
Abraham Lincoln, the best of Presidents, had perished by 



398 DEATH OF PKESIDENT LINCOLN. 

the hands of an assassin ; and then all the feelings which 
had been gathering for four years, in forms of excitement, 
grief, horror, and joy, turned into one wail of woe — a sadness 
inexpressible — an anguish unutterable. But it is not the 
times merely which caused this mourning. The mode of 
his death must be taken into the account. Had he died 
on a bed of illness, with kind friends around him; had 
the sweat of death been wiped from his brow by gentle 
hands, while he was yet conscious ; could he have had 
power to speak words of affection to his stricken widow, 
or words of counsel to us like those which we heard in his 
parting inaugural at "Washington, which shall now be im- 
mortal — how it would have softened or assuaged something 
of the grief. There might, at least, have been prepara- 
tion for the event. But no moment of warning was given 
to him or to us. He was stricken down, too, when his 
hopes for the end of the rebellion were bright, and pros- 
pects of a joyous life were before him. There was a cabinet 
meeting that day, said to have been the most cheerful and 
happy of any held since the beginning of the rebellion. 
After this meeting he talked with his friends, and spoke 
of the four years of tempest, of the storm being over, and 
of the four years of pleasure and joy now awaiting him, 
as the weight of care and anxiety would be taken from his 
mind, and he could have happy days with his family again. 
In the midst of these anticipations he left his house never 
to return alive. The evening was Good Friday, the sad- 
dest day in the whole calendar for the Christian Church — 
henceforth in this country to be made sadder, if possible, 
by the memory of our nation's loss ; and so filled with 
grief was every Christian heart that even all the joyous 



simpson. 399 

thought of Easter Sunday failed to remove the crushing 
sorrow under which the true worshiper bowed in the 
house of God. 

But the great cause of this mourning is to be found in 
the man himself. Mr. Lincoln was no ordinary man. I 
believe the conviction has been growing on the nation's 
mind, as it certainly has been on my own, especially in 
the last years of his administration, that, by the hand of 
God, he was especially singled out to guide our Govern- 
ment in these troublesome times, and it seems to me that 
the hand of God may be traced in many of the events 
connected with his history. First, then, I recognize this 
in the physical education which he received, and which 
prepared him for enduring herculean labors. In the toils 
of his boyhood and the labors of his manhood, God was 
giving him an iron frame. JSText to this was his identifi- 
cation with the heart of the great people, understanding 
their feelings because he was one of them, and connected 
with them in their movements and life. His education 
was simple. A few months spent in the schoolhouse gave 
him the elements of education. Pie read few books, but 
mastered all he read. Bunyan's Progress, (Esop's Fables, 
and the Life of Washington were his favorites. In these 
we recognize the works which gave bias to his character, 
and which partly molded his style. His early life, with 
its varied struggles, joined him indissolubly to the working 
masses, and no elevation in society diminished his respect 
for the sons of toil. He knew what it was to fell the tall 
trees of the forest and to stem the current of the broad 
Mississippi. His home was in the growing "West, the 
heart of the Republic, and, invigorated by the wind which 



400 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

swept over its prairies, he learned lessons of self-reliance 
which sustained him in seasons of adversity. 

His genius was soon recognized, as true genius always 
will be, and he was placed in the Legislature of his State. 
Already acquainted with the principles of law, he devoted 
his thoughts to matters of public interest, and began to 
be looked on as the coming statesman. As early as 1839 
he presented resolutions in the Legislature, asking for 
emancipation in the District of Columbia, when, with but 
rare exceptions, the whole popular mind of his State was 
opposed to the measure. From that hour he was a steady 
and uniform friend of humanity, and was preparing for 
the conflict of latter years. 

If you ask me on what mental characteristic his great- 
ness rested, I answer, on a quick and ready perception of 
facts ; on a memory unusually tenacious and retentive ; 
and on a logical turn of mind, which followed sternly and 
unwaveringly every link in the chain of thought on every 
subject which he was called to investigate. I think there 
have been minds more broad in their character, more com- 
prehensive in their scope, but I doubt if ever there has 
been a man who could follow step by step, with more 
logical power, the points which he desired to illustrate. 
He gained this power by the close study of geometry, and 
by a determination to perceive the truth in all its relations 
and simplicity, and, when found, to utter it. 

It is said of him that in childhood, when he had any 
difficulty in listening to a conversation to ascertain what 
people meant, if he retired to rest he could not sleep till 
he tried to understand the precise points intended, and, 
when understood, to frame language to convey it in a 



SIMPSON. 401 

clearer manner to others. "Who that has read his messages 
fails to perceive the directness and the simplicity of his 
style ? And this very trait, which was scoffed at and 
decried by opponents, is now recognized as one of the 
strong points of that mighty mind which has so powerfully 
influenced the destiny of this nation, and which shall, for 
ages to come, influence the destiny of humanity. 

It was not, however, chiefly by his mental faculties that 
he gained such control over mankind. His moral power 
gave him pre-eminence. The convictions of men that 
Abraham Lincoln was an honest man led them to yield to 
his guidance. As has been said of Cobden, whom he 
greatly resembled, he made all men feel a sense of himself 
— a recognition of individuality — a self-relying power. 
They saw in him a man whom they believed would do 
what is right, regardless of all consequences. It was this 
moral feeling which gave him the greatest hold on the 
people, and made his utterances almost oracular. When 
the nation was angered by the perfidy of foreign nations 
in allowing privateers to be fitted out, he uttered the sig- 
nificant expression, " One war at a time," and it stilled 
the national heart. When his own friends were divided 
as to what steps should be taken as to slavery, that simple 
utterance, "I will save the Union, if I can, with slavery ; 
if not, slavery must perish, for the Union must be pre- 
served," became the rallying word. Men felt the strug- 
gle was for the Union, and all other questions must be 
subsidiary. 

But, after all, by the acts of a man shall his fame be 
perpetuated. What are his acts ? Much praise is due to 
the men who aided him. He called able counselors around 



402 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

him — some of whom have displayed the highest order of 
talent, united with the purest and most devoted patriot- 
ism. He summoned able generals into the field — men 
who have borne the sword as bravely as ever any human 
arm has borne it. He had the aid of prayerful and 
thoughtful men everywhere. But, under his own guiding 
hands, wise counsels were combined and great movements 
conducted. 

Turn towards the different departments. We had an 
unorganized militia, a mere skeleton army, yet, under his 
care, that army has been enlarged into a force which, for 
skill, intelligence, effciency, and bravery, surpasses any 
which the world had ever seen. Before its veterans the 
fame of even the renowned veterans of Napoleon shall 
pale, (applause), and the mothers and sisters on these hill 
sides, and all over the land, shall take to their arms again 
braver sons and brothers than ever fought in European 
wars. The reason is obvious. Money, or a desire for 
fame, collected those armies, or they were rallied to sus- 
tain favorite thrones or dynasties ; but the armies he called 
into being fought for liberty, for the Union, and for the 
right of self-government ; and many of them felt that the 
battles they won were for humanity everywhere and for 
all time ; for I believe that God has not suffered this ter- 
rible rebellion to come upon our land merely for a chas- 
tisement to us, or as a lesson to our age. There are mo- 
ments which involve in themselves eternities. There are 
instants which seem to contain germs which shall develop 
and bloom forever. Such a moment came in the tide of 
time to our land, when a question must be settled which 
affected all the earth. The contest was for human freedom, 



SIMPSON. 403 

not for this republic merely ; not for the Union simply, but 
to decide whether the people, as a people, in their entire 
majesty, were destined to be the government, or whether 
they were to be subject to tyrants or aristocrats, or to class- 
rule of any kind. This is the great question for which we 
have been fighting, and its decision is at hand, and the 
result of the contest will affect the ages to come. If suc- 
cessful, republics will spread in spite of monarchs, all over 
this earth. (Exclamations of " Amen." " Thank God.") 

I turn from the army to the navy. What was it w T hen 
the war commenced ? Now we have our ships-of-war at 
home and- abroad, to guard privateers in foreign sympa- 
thizing ports, as well as to care for every part of our own 
coast. They have taken forts that military men said could 
not be taken, and a brave admiral, for the first time in the 
world's history, lashed himself to the mast, there to remain 
as long as he had a particle of skill or strength to watch 
over his ship, while it engaged in the perilous contest of 
taking the strong forts of the rebels. 

Then, again, I turn to the treasury department. Where 
should the money come from ? Wise men predicted ruin, 
but our national credit has been maintained, and our cur- 
rency is safer to-day than it ever was before. Not only 
so, but through our national bonds, if properly used, we 
shall have a permanent basis for our currency, and an in- 
vestment so desirable for capitalists of other nations that, 
under the laws of trade, I believe the centre of exchange 
will speedily be transferred from England to the United 
States. 

But the great act of the mighty chieftain, on which his 
fame shall rest long after his frame shall molder away, is 



404 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

that of giving freedom to a race. We have all been 
taught to revere the sacred characters. Among them 
Moses stands pre-eminently high. He received the law 
from God, and his name is honored among the hosts of 
heaven. Was not his greatest act the delivering of three 
millions of his kindred out of bondage ? Yet we may 
assert that Abraham Lincoln, by his proclamation, libe- 
rated more enslaved people than ever Moses set free, and 
those not of his kindred or his race. Such a power, or 
such an opportunity, God has seldom given to man. 
When other events shall have been forgotten ; when this 
world shall have become a network of republics ; when 
every throne shall be swept from the face of the earth ; 
when literature shall enlighten all minds ; when the claims 
of humanity shall be recognized everywhere, this act shall 
still be conspicuous on the pages of history. We are 
thankful that God gave to Abraham Lincoln the decision 
and wisdom and grace to issue that proclamation, which 
stands high above all other papers which have been 
penned by uninspired men. [Applause.] 

Abraham Lincoln was a good man. He was known as 
an honest, temperate, forgiving man ; a just man ; a man of 
noble heart in every way. As to his religious experience, I 
cannot speak definitely, because I was not privileged to 
know much of his private sentiments. My acquaintance 
with him did not give me the opportunity to hear him speak 
on those topics. This I know, however, he read the Bible 
frequently ; loved it for its great truths and its profound 
teachings ; and he tried to be guided by its precepts. He 
believed in Christ the Saviour of sinners ; and I think he 
was sincere in trying to bring his life into harmony with 



SIMPSON. 405 

the principles of revealed religion. Certainly if there 
ever was a man who illustrated some of the principles of 
pure religion, that man was our departed President. Look 
over all his speeches, listen to his utterances. He never 
spoke unkindly of any man. Even the rebels received no 
word of anger from him, and his last day illustrated in a 
remarkable manner his forgiving disposition. A dispatch 
was received that afternoon that Thompson and Tucker 
were trying to make their escape through Maine, and it 
was proposed to arrest them. Mr. Lincoln, however, pre- 
ferred rather to let them quietly escape. He was seeking 
to save the very men who had been plotting his destruc- 
tion. This morning we read a proclamation "offering 
$25,000 for the arrest of these men as aiders and abettors 
of his assassination ; so that, in his expiring acts, he was 
saying, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they 
do." 

As a ruler, I doubt if any President has ever shown 
such trust in God, or in public documents so frequently 
referred to Divine aid. Often did he remark to friends 
and to delegations that his hope for our success rested in 
his conviction that God would bless our efforts, because 
we were trying to do right. To the address of a large 
religious body he replied, " Thanks be unto God, who, in 
our national trials, giveth us the churches." To a min- 
ister who said he hoped the Lord was on our side, he re- 
plied that it gave him no concern whether the Lord was 
on our side or not, for, he added, " I know the Lord is 
always on the side of right," and with deep feeling added, 
" But God is my witness that it is my constant anxiety 
and prayer that both myself and this nation should be on 
the Lord's side." 



406 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

In his domestic life he was exceedingly kind and affec- 
tionate. He was a devoted husband and father. During 
his presidential term he lost his second son, Willie. To 
an officer of the army he said, not long since, " Do you 
ever find yourself talking with the dead ? " and added, 
" Since Willie's death I catch myself every day involun- 
tarily talking with him, as if he were with me." On his 
widow, who is unable to be here, I need only invoke the 
blessing of Almighty God that she may be comforted and 
sustained. For his son, who has witnessed the exercises 
of this hour, all that I can desire is that the mantle of his 
father may fall upon him. [Exclamations of " Amen."' 

Let us pause a moment in the lesson of the hour before 
we part. This man, though he fell by an assassin, still 
fell under the permissive hand of God. He had some 
wise purpose in allowing him so to fall. What more 
could he have desired of life for himself? Were not his 
honors full ? There was no office to which he could 
aspire. The popular heart clung around him as around 
no other man. The nations of the world had learned to 
honor our chief magistrate. If rumors of a desired alliance 
with England be true, Napoleon trembled when he heard 
of the fall of Richmond, and asked w T hat nation would 
join him to protect him against our Government under the 
guidance of such a man. His fame was full, his work was 
done, and he sealed his glory by becoming the nation's 
great martyr for liberty. 

He appears to have had a strange presentiment, early in 
political life, that some day he would be President. You 
see it indicated in 1839. Of the slave power he said, 
" Broken by it I too may be ; bow r to it I never will. The 



SIMPSON. 407 

probability that we may fail in the strngg e ought not to 
deter us from the support of a cause which we deem to be 
just. It shall not deter me. If ever I feel the soul within 
me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly 
unworthy of its Almighty architect, it is when I contem- 
plate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world 
besides, and I standing up boldly and alone and hurling 
defiance at her victorious oppressors. Here without con- 
templating consequences, before high Heaven and in the 
face of the world, I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, 
as I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty, and my 
love." And yet, secretly, he said to more than one, " I 
never shall live out the four years of my term. When the 
rebellion is crushed my work is done." So it was. He 
lived to see the last battle fought, and dictate a despatch 
from the home of JeiFerson Davis ; lived till the power of 
the rebellion was broken ; and then, having done the work 
for which God had sent him, angels, I trust, were sent to 
shield him from one moment of pain or suffering, and to 
bear him from this world to the high and glorious realm 
where the patriot and the good shall live forever. 

His career teaches young men that every position of 
eminence is open before the diligent and the worthy. To 
the active men of the country, his example is. an incentive 
to trust in God and do right. 

Standing, as we do to-day, by his coffin and his sepul- 
chre, let us resolve to carry forward the policy which he 
so nobly began. Let us do right to all men. To the 
ambitious there is this fearful lesson : Of the four candi- 
dates for Presidential honors in 1SG0, two of them — 
Douglas and Lincoln — once competitors, but now sleeping 



408 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

patriots, rest from their labors ; Bell perished in poverty 
and misery, as a traitor might perish ; and Breckinridge is 
a frightened fugitive, with the brand of traitor on his brow. 
Let us vow, in the sight of Heaven, to eradicate every 
vestige of human slavery ; to give every human being his 
true position before God and man ; to crush every form 
of rebellion, and to stand by the flag which God has given 
us. How joyful that it floated over parts of every State 
before Mr. Lincoln's career was ended. How singular 
that, to the fact of the assassin's heels being caught in the 
folds of the flag, we are probably indebted for his capture. 
The flag and the traitor must ever be enemies. 

Traitors will probably suffer by the change of rulers, 
for one of sterner mould, and who himself has deeply suf- 
fered from the rebellion, now wields the sword of justice. 
Our country, too, is stronger for the trial. A republic 
was declared by monarchists too weak to endure a civil 
war ; yet we have crushed the most gigantic rebellion in 
history, and have grown in strength and population every 
year of the struggle. We have passed through the ordeal 
of a popular election while swords and bayonets were in 
the field, and have come out unharmed. And now, in an 
hour of excitement, with a large majority having preferred 
another man for President, when the bullet of the assassin 
has laid our President prostrate, has there been a mutiny ? 
Has auy rival proffered his claims ? Out of an army of 
near a million, no officer or soldier uttered one note of 
dissent, and, in an hour or two after Mr. Lincoln's death, 
another leader under constitutional forms, occupied his 
chair, and the government moved forward without one 



SIMPSON. 409 

single jar. The world will learn that republics are the 
strongest governments on earth. 

And now, my friends, in the words of the departed, 
" with malice towards none," free from all feelings of 
personal vengeance, yet believing that the sword must not 
be borne in vain, let us go forward even in painful duty. 
Let every man who was a senator or representative in 
Congress, and who aided in beginning this rebellion, and 
thus led to the slaughter of our sons and daughters, be 
brought to speedy and to certain punishment. Let every 
officer educated at the public expense, and who, having 
been advanced to position, perjured himself and turned 
his sword against the vitals of his country, be doomed to 
a traitor's death. This, I believe, is the will of the 
American people. Men may attempt to compromise, and 
to restore these traitors and murderers to society again. 
Vainly may they talk of the fancied honor or chivalry of 
these murderers of our sons — these starvers of our prison- 
ers — these officers who mined their prisons and placed 
kegs of powder to destroy our captive officers. But the 
American people will rise in their majesty and sweep all 
such compromises and compromisers away, and will 
declare that there shall be no safety for rebel leaders. 
But to the deluded masses we will extend the arms of 
forgiveness. We will take them to our hearts, and walk 
with them side by side, as we go forward to work out a 
glorious destiny. 

The time will come when, in the beautiful words of him 
whose lips are now forever sealed, " the mystic chords of 
memory, which stretch from every battle-field, and from 



410 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

every patriot's grave, shall yield a sweeter music when 
touched by the angels of our better nature." 

Chieftain ! farewell ! The nation mourns thee. Mothers 
shall teach thy name to their lisping children. The youth 
of our land shall emulate thy virtues. Statesmen shall 
study thy record and learn lessons of wisdom. Mute 
though thy lips be, yet they still speak. Hushed is thy 
voice, but its echoes of liberty are ringing through the 
world, and the sons of bondage listen with joy. Prisoned 
thou art in death, and yet thou art marching abroad, and 
chains and manacles are bursting at thy touch. Thou 
didst fall not for thyself. The assassin had no hate for 
thee. Our hearts were aimed at, our national life was 
sought. We crown thee as our martyr — and humanity 
enthrones thee as her triumphant son. Hero, Martyr, 
Friend, Farewell ! 



PRAYER, 



BY REV. S. H. TYNG, D. D., UNION SQUARE, APRIL 25, ON 

THE OCCASION OF THE FUNERAL OBSEQUIES 

OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 



The Citizens' Committee, with their guests, assembled 
at the close of the municipal procession, in the presence 
of a large concourse of people, and Mr. Blodgett, Chair- 
man of the Committee of Arrangements, announced Hon. 
John A. King as the President of the meeting. Gover- 
nor King then introduced Rev. Stephen H. Tyng, D. D., 
who offered the following 

PRAYER. 

I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord ; he 
that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he 
live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never 
die. I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall 
stand at the latter day upon the earth, and though, after 
my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I 
see God, whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall 
behold and not another. We brought nothing into this 
world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The 
Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away ; blessed be the 
name of the Lord. O God, who art the God of the spirits 



4i;2 DEATH OF PKESLDENT LINCOLN. 

of all flesh, in whose hand our breath is and whose are all 
our ways, in thine infinite wisdom Thou hast seen well to 
take away the desire of our eyes with a stroke, the anointed 
of the Lord and the faithful choice of a loving people, 
under whose shadow we hoped and desired to dwell before 
Thee. We bow before thy righteous will with deep hu- 
miliation, submission, confidence, and faith. We revere 
and acknowledge Thee as the high and lofty One who 
inhabitest eternity, whose name is Holy, with whom is 
no variableness, neither shadow of turning. We look 
up to Thee as a Father of infinite tenderness, reconciling 
us unto Thyself in Thy dear Son ; and as a father pitieth 
his own children, so to have compassion on all them that 
fear Thee. We confess Thee as the Saviour and defence 
of Thy people, Who hast put away their sins by an infi- 
nite sacrifice, and as far as the east is from the west, 
and rememberest our iniquity no more. We acknowl- 
edge Thee this day the God of all comfort and consola- 
tion, Whose gracious command in Thy word is, " Com- 
fort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God ; cry unto 
them that their warfare is accomplished and their iniquity 
is pardoned." O God, we would bow with deep humility 
before the righteousness of Thy will, and with unfeigned 
gratitude acknowledge the fullness of Thy grace. A 
mourning and bereaved people gather together at Thy 
feet ; we would come with the deepest feeling of thank- 
fulness for that which Thou hast given and that which 
Thou hast taken away. We bless Thee for all the influ- 
ence, example, wisdom, and fidelity of the loved and ex- 
alted ruler whom Thou didst set over us, and whom Thou 
hast now taken to Thyself. We praise Thee that Thou 



i'fiAYER BY KEV. S. H. TYNG, D. D. 413 



hast made liim the instrument of saving this nation from 
overthrow and ruin — that Thou hast made him Thine 
agent in subduing a rebellion terrific and atrocious, whose 
condemnation is recorded by Thee. "We bless Thee that 
Thou hast spoken peace by him to the oppressed and suf- 
fering, proclaiming liberty to those held in bondage, and 
bidding millions of the helpless and despairing lift up their 
heads with joy among Thy people. We thank Thee for 
the remembrance of all his fidelity in government, ruling 
in equity as the morning which ariseth without a cloud, 
and for all that meekness and gentleness, and faithfulness 
and love, so attractive and so conspicuous in his example. 
And while with the deepest sense of our loss we bow, as 
bereaved and mourning ones, at Thy feet, with the most 
humble thankfulness for all that the nation has gained 
through his instrumentality and faithfulness, we adore 
and glorify Thy name. We meet throughout this land 
to-day in the spirit of accordant supplication and praise. 
We implore Thy blessing upon this whole nation, that 
this chastisement, painful and mysterious as it appears, 
may be Thine instrument for uniting this people in bonds 
of fellowship and love, and bringing the hearts of all in full 
accord in the support of the government which Thou hast 
set over us, and in seeking the things which make for peace 
and the things whereby one may edify another. We pray 
that in the midst of Thy judgments this whole nation may 
learn righteousness. We implore Th}^ gracious blessing 
upon the sorrowing and the suffering, upon the wounded 
and the bereaved, who have given their joy on earth, their 
health in early life, as a service and sacrifice for their 
fidelity to us and their obedience to Thee. We unite in 



414 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

supplication for Thy blessing upon the widow and the 
fatherless, who stood in the tenderest relations to our hon- 
ored and exalted ruler, and while from them, as from us, 
Thou hast hidden lover and friend in darkness, we implore 
Thee to be the everlasting Ruler of this people, and make 
them to remember and feel that the Most High ordereth 
all things among the nations of the earth, putting down 
one and setting up another. We implore Thy blessing 
upon him whom, in Thine own providence, Thou hast ex- 
alted to be the present ruler of this nation. Guard his 
valued life from outward violence and from fear of wrong ; 
guide him by Thine own wisdom and judgment, and suc- 
cor and defend him by Thine own protecting power. Give 
him wise and faithful counsellors who shall combine to 
rule this people in equity and truth ; prosper all their 
efforts for a speedy, stable, and righteous peace through- 
out this nation. O God ! in the sorrow of this day, hasten 
the coming hour when this people shall desire to learn 
war no more ; when they shall speak peace to all the 
nations of the earth, and North and South, East and 
West, dwelling in concord and harmony, we shall be one 
people, known by one name and feeling, and that we have 
one interest forever. Set up Thy glorious Gospel through 
all this land ; make it Emmanuel's land ; and as Thou 
wast our fathers' God, be Thou our God and the God of 
our seed afterwards, from generation to generation, through 
successive Presidents of fidelity, usefulness and honor ; 
that this people may be a prospered people, a thankful 
people, a useful people, a holy people, under Thy govern- 
ment and by Thy blessing. And this day we ask that 
for all the nations of the earth a dominion of righteous- 



PRAYER BY REV. S. H. TYNG, D. D. 415 



ness and peace — Thine everlasting dominion — may be set 
up, and the kingdoms of the world may become the king- 
dom of our Lord and of His Christ. Meet us; sanctify 
us, and bless us as we are here together ; and in the spirit 
of filial gratitude and humility teach us to unite in using 
those precious words of our Divine Redeemer : Our Fa- 
ther, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name ; Thy 
kingdom come ; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in 
heaven ; give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us 
our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against 
us ; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from 
evil ; for Thine is the kingdom, and the power and the 
glory, for ever and ever. — Amen. 



PRAYER. 



Eev. E. P. Kogers, D. D., offered the following Prayer: 
Almighty and everlasting God, Thou art our God, and 
we will praise Thee. Thou wert our fathers' God, and 
we will magnify Thy holy name. Thou art the high and 
lofty One that inhabiteth eternity. Thou doest all things 
according to Thy will, among the armies of heaven and 
among the inhabitants of earth. None can stay Thy hand 
or say, "What doest Thou ?" Thy way is in the sea and 
Thy path in the great waters, and Thy footsteps are not 
known. Clouds and darkness are around and beneath, 
but righteousness and judgment are the habitation of Thy 
throne. Thou hast, in Thy inscrutable providence, called 
us together in sadness and sorrow, and stricken a mourn- 
ing people. We bow beneath the stroke of Thy hand, 
and we lift up our hearts to Thee out of the depths of the 
calamity. Thou hast removed by a sudden, violent and 
unexpected blow our honored President. Thou hast bro- 
ken our strong staff and our beautiful rod, and from one 
end of this land to the other the sound of wailing and of 
woe is borne on every breeze. The nation follows the 
body of its lamented chief with mourning hearts and 
streaming eyes to its last earthly resting-place. We hum- 
ble ourselves, O God, beneath the stroke of Thy hand, 
and we find comfort and hope in the thought that it is 
not an enemy that has dealt us the blow, but a just 



418 PRAYER BY REV. E. P. ROGERS, D. D. 

God, in His infinite wisdom, and who doeth all things 
well ; and so we would say in the midst of our sorrows 
over the bier of our lamented and murdered President, 
" The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed 
be the name of the Lord." But O, our God, while we 
mourn, we thank Thee for the circumstances of mercy 
which are mingled with this stroke. We bless Thee in 
the midst of our sorrow that Thou didst give us Thy servant 
to be the leader and commander of Thy people in times 
of peril. And we bless Thee that Thou hast girded him 
with wisdom and might in counsel and in the field. We 
bless Thee that Thou didst guide him in all his difficult and 
delicate way, and didst permit him to .live so long and do 
so much for the benefit and welfare of this land. And 
we bless Thee that since it was Thy will to take him away, 
Thou didst remove him in the midst of his years and 
honors, with no shadow upon his fame, but to be cherished 
in the memory of a grateful people to the latest genera- 
tions. We bless Thee that Thou didst permit our lamented 
chief to see this atrocious and causeless rebellion crushed. 
We bless Thee that Thou didst permit him to see the 
loved banners of our country waving again in triumph 
over all its States and Territories. We bless Thee that 
Thou didst permit him to bring freedom to the captive 
and liberty to the bondsmen, and to go to his honored grave, 
to be kept ever green by the tears of a grateful people, 
having done his work and done it well, to the glory of 
God, and for the best welfare of his native land. And 
while we sorrow, we sorrow not as others who have no 
hope. We bless God for his memory, enshrined in our 
deepest hearts. Oh ! let it be sacred to the remotest 



DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 419 

times in the great heart of the American people. Let it 
be an inspiration to all that is pure, all that is honest, all 
that is faithful, all that is patriotic ; to all that is patient, 
gentle, loving and kind ; to all that is firm, to all that is 
Christian ; and let peace, with freedom, with justice, with 
righteousness and with Christianity, raise an everlasting 
monument above the spot where sleeps his honored dust. 
Onr Father, we commend to Thee the country for which 
he loved and wept, and toiled and prayed and died. We 
bless Thee that Thou hast given to that wearied brain 
rest — rest to that anxious heart — rest to that troubled 
spirit — a blessed rest. But we bless Thee that though the 
President died, the Republic lives, God lives, our just God, 
and we bless Thee that when our Moses led the people 
through the wilderness to the borders of Canaan, and saw 
as from Mount Pisgah the glorious land of Promise, and 
laid him down *to die — that Thou hadst another Joshua to 
take his work upon him and to clear this beautiful land 
of the last remnant of the rebellious tribes. O God, 
assist our new President in his work ; let him administer 
justice and maintain truth ; and with purity, with hon- 
esty, with piety and patriotism, like his honored prede- 
cessor, let him accomplish the great and delicate work 
that yet remains to be done, and be a benefit to the land. 
Remember the widow and the fatherless, O Thou who art 
the widow's God and Father of the fatherless. Have 
them in Thy holy keeping, and wipe their tears away ; x 
and let them be cherished by the sympathies and prayers 
of a grateful people. We ask Thy tender mercy in be- 
half of Thy servant, the Secretary of State. O Lord, 
heal his wounds, make his broken bones rejoice, raise him 



/ 



420 PRAYER BY REV. E. P. ROGERS, D. D. 

up from the bed of weakness whereon lie lies, and let his 
counsel yet be given to his country, and his life be spared 
to her services ; and, O Lord, let Thy blessing be on the 
land in all its beauty and glory. Let our fathers' God be 
our God, and never in all its after history let the least ves- 
tige of treason or of slavery do anything to dishonor God 
or man, or rest as a dark curse upon us. But let the 
whole country be the home of freedom, of intelligence, of 
true and pure Christianity — a beacon light among the 
nations of the earth and a great benediction to the people. 
Hear this our prayer. Let Thy blessing be upon us all, 
forgive our sins, and graciously hear, in the name of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, to whom with the Holy Ghost shall be 
honor and glory, world without end. — Amen. 



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